SILAS MAXWELL SWITZER

Education

- Certificates: Russian, Eurasian, and Eastern European Studies; Medieval and Renaissance Studies

- Switzer, S. M. (2023). Nine Parts Water, One Part Bleach. Charlotte, NC: Main Street Rag.

- Switzer, S. M. (2024). ‘Once More, With Feeling’ (2001), J. Whedon (dir.), Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Season 6 Episode 7 (6 November, USA: UPN). Queer Studies in Media & Popular Culture, Volume 9(Issue 2), 208-214.

History Department funding to attend the AHA Annual Conference, University of Pittsburgh, 2025

Matter: A Queer Archival Junk Journal (working title) is a multimedia experimental project that explores the question: what does it mean to archive as an art? It contemplates the nature of the process of archiving through the lens of a queer youth open mic series run in Pittsburgh in the late 2010s.

"Everyday Silences: Exploring Queer Memory and Archival Presence in 20th-Century Pittsburgh" (working title) is a senior thesis that uses Donny Thinnes' papers at the Detre Library & Archives to explore the questions of queer technologies, how queer people communicate and identify themselves both past and present. It also seeks to learn information about late 20th century queer Pittsburgh from Donny's archive. And finally, it seeks to consider the concepts and methodologies of archival silence and archival extraction: what does it mean to extract from an archive, and should we as historians reconsider this approach? What work does silence in an archive do, and what work might I do with that silence?

Archives Clerk, QBurgh, Pittsburgh, PA, June 2023-Present. I am working to digitize and itemize thousands of images, pamphlets, and other paraphernalia from the old OUT newspaper — a local queer newspaper that ran from 1979-2012 — with the ultimate goal of producing a digital archive of all of these materials.

Archives & Special Collections Student Music Assistant, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, October-December 2023. I itemized posters and other signage from the Sam Rivers collection at the University of Pittsburgh Archives & Special Collections at Thomas Boulevard.