T.J. Tallie

Community Historian-in-Residence
(he/they)
​
T.J. Tallie (he/they) is an Associate Professor of African History at the University of San Diego. He specializes in comparative settler colonial, indigenous, queer, and imperial history, with a focus in the late nineteenth century. They are the author of Queering Colonial Natal: Indigeneity and the Violence of Belonging in Southern Africa. Tallie's current research studies the role of monogamy in colonial societies, and the queer potential of Indigenous social formations, including polygamy.

​While serving as Lambda’s Community Historian in residence, Tallie is at work on a project, titled “‘Whose World, Whose Home?’: Black Queer Life in San Diego, 1988-2002.” “Whose World, Whose Home” is an archival study of the lives of Black queer San Diegans in the late 1980s and 1990s, a time of profound change both for the city and in national attitudes towards race and sexuality.  This project examines how Black queer San Diegans navigated, defined, and articulated the changing city around them.  “Whose World, Whose Home” draws from the papers of Black gay and lesbian activists, Black queer newspaper editorials, first-person recollections from the period, and overall archives from the San Diego LGBT Community Center and San Diego Pride.  Drawing on a body of Black and queer theoretical literature and influenced by their three years as the inaugural director of the Africana Studies program at the University of San Diego, this project is a deep-resourced archival project that seeks to foreground Black queer voices in a significant part of our local community’s history.