Making It Personal: Using Biography to Teach LGBTQ+ History

History is more powerful and relevant when students are able to see it as a collection of stories about individuals’ experiences and contributions rather than a series of events devoid of human involvement or emotion. Providing students with the opportunity to engage with a compelling narrative that includes people whose actions and lives do not appear in the textbook increases student engagement and identification with individuals and themes in the past. This is especially true for LGBTQ+ history, because it demonstrates the ways that individuals who identify as LGBTQ+ have been instrumental in every historical era dating back to ancient cultures. Furthermore, forefronting individuals’ stories expands the number of entry points to integrate this history into the curriculum and illustrates how the LGBTQ+ community has consistently contributed to the historical record in large and small ways.

Understanding the role and impact of LGBTQ+ individuals in the past is crucial in the present. As of February 2026, twenty-six states have laws banning affirming care for transgender youth, twenty-seven states prohibit students from participating in sports consistent with their gender identity, and book bans increasingly target texts with LGBTQ+ themes (Movement Advancement Project, 2026; PEN America, 2025). Including LGBTQ+ individuals in the history curriculum and amplifying the ways in which this population has always existed and, in many cases, thrived, is a necessary measure in supporting students who identify as LGBTQ+ and making this population’s significance clear to those who do not. These biographical accounts push back against the idea that identifying as LGBTQ+ is a twenty-first century phenomenon and increase opportunities for representation in an era when LGBTQ+ students continue to feel marginalized, unrecognized, and, in the worst circumstances, unsafe. Teaching LGBTQ+ history through a biographical lens, then, uplifts students who might identify with these individuals and makes history more resonant and real for all.

This poster will visually demonstrate how teachers and instructors in K-12 classes and history survey courses can connect LGBTQ+ individuals to different eras in US and world history to enrich the teaching of each time period by making it more comprehensive and intersectional. The section devoted to US history, for example, will feature photographs of individuals like Albert Cashier (Civil War), William Dorsey Swann (Reconstruction), We’Wha (western expansion), Ma Rainey (Harlem Renaissance), and Sylvia Rivera (civil rights) connecting them to the era in which they lived. The world history section will similarly demonstrate the connection between LGBTQ+ individuals and historical periods in Europe, Asia, Latin America, and Africa. The poster will include charts and graphs indicating the need for this content in K-12 classrooms, statistics on LGBTQ+ identities among Generations Z and Alpha, and charts representing the teacher-reported impact of inclusive curriculum on students. It will be organized in sections that indicate the significance of each of these factors on their own as well as the way that they interact and impact upon each other. The poster will also feature a QR code through which conference attendees can access classroom ready resources on each individual.