PROJECT: OutHistory

OutHistory is a public history website dedicated to generating, presenting, and promoting high-quality, evidence-based LGBTQ+ historical research for broad audiences, with a non-exclusive focus on the United States and Canada. Founded by Jonathan Ned Katz, the platform’s core mission is to foster broad community participation in the process of discovering and writing LGBTQ+ histories, prioritizing under-represented narratives. The site hosts over 200 scholarly and community-curated digital exhibits and timelines, such as the collaborative living resource The Transgender History Timeline, all of which use primary source materials to analyze how gender and sexuality have been discussed, defined, and lived over time.

OutHistory is an actively maintained resource, serving as a vital digital counter-archive against historical erasure and distortion. Recent highlights include exhibits documenting recent government censorship, such as the “The Queer History of Women’s Suffrage: Scholarship and Censorship in 2025” exhibit. This project archives historian Wendy Rouse’s original essay after the National Park Service (NPS) unilaterally altered and deleted it, specifically by removing all references to gender-nonconformity, transgender, and non-binary people. Other efforts include the exhibit “Trumping the Trumpians: OutHistory and American Oversight, 2025“, which reprints Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests filed to investigate federal actions against LGBTQ+ history. Furthermore, OutHistory cultivates new scholarship through the OutHistory Fellowship Program (OFP), which provides a US$1,800 honorarium for projects on under-represented topics relating to LGBTQ+ history in North America.