Our Sapphos

for better formatting, check out the StoryMap here: https://uploads.knightlab.com/storymapjs/25b6f5f59004e9a3821593629e117599/hos-project-2023/index.html

Sappho has become reemergent. The queer community has attributed the term “sapphic” to the love and sexual relations between women. Groups of lesbians and queer women have grasped onto Sappho as a female figure to celebrate love between women and the visibility of lesbians and women in queer relationships. The Daughters of Bilitis, a lesbian club, have celebrated Sappho in their newsletters and activism since their founding 1955. Many artists, scholars, and activists have found solace and connection with Sappho and have, as a result, made art, written articles, and created movements. You can explore more about Sappho’s more recent historical influence in the Story Map above.

As we read Sappho’s poetry and fragments in our own class, we discovered our own connections to Sappho and how we might relate to her experiences, even 2,600 years after she was writing. For me, Sappho’s poetry sheds light on my own experience as a queer woman and provides me with a sort of ancestral, female, queer role model. Basically, she makes me feel seen. Queer women, and queer people more generally, have always existed throughout history and we will persist in our existence. As a result, many of us found personal connections within her poetry that sparked our own creative responses, whether that be in the form of more poetry or other creative means. In the following section, we have shared some of these creative responses.

–Tristen L.