Such thoughts lead us invariably to consider pedagogical ramifications. While queerness has increasingly been a subject in writing studies, with some attention paid to issues of queerness online, the possibilities of the queer archive, much less the online queer archive, remain under-examined. But we argue here that working with queer online archives—as well as actively participating in their construction—can significantly enliven our understanding of rhetorical practice in the public sphere.

To start, greater access to resources and information expands the potential pool of those involved in creating archives. Indeed, Judith Halberstam notes that the creation of queer archives is not simply a project just for scholars and academics, but also for a wide array of “cultural producers,” of those actively involved in the production and dissemination of information and data points that become part of the larger cloud of potential meaning making. Surely, many of our students count among this group, particularly as many of them are not just consumers but also prosumers of media. For us, such prosumerism presents an exciting pedagogical opportunity, as we can potentially work with students on the creation of a number of archives, thinking with them about the canon of arrangement—or how one might organize an archive to assert a particular set of points or values.