Queer Economies of Care is a six-week, community-centered seminar that revives and expands The Seminars in the City program - a historic public educational framework established in the 1990s to bring Queer Studies directly into NYC community spaces. This revival honors Amber Hollibaugh, a radical feminist, lesbian, scholar, artist, and lifelong activist. Hollibaugh founded Queers for Economic Justice, directed the Lesbian AIDS Project at GMHC (formerly Gay Men’s Health Crisis), and established Queer Survival Economies at the Barnard Center for Research on Women. Her work advocated for sexual freedom, bodily autonomy, and collective survival.

Designed and facilitated by Gili Rappaport, the seminar functions as an intergenerational study group, community clinic, and collaborative practice space. Bringing together over 50 local NYC residents spanning ages 20 to 76, the project explores how queer, trans, and marginalized communities have historically built survival economies through mutual aid, kinship networks, embodied care, and creative resistance.

Blending critical theory with movement, storytelling, mapping, and tactile art-making, the seminar treats pleasure, accessibility, and relational care as core pedagogical values.

Seminar Iterations

2026 - Embodiment, Play, and the Art of Holding

Feb 19 – March 26, 2026, WOW Café Theater (East Village, NYC)

Hosted at WOW Café Theater - a historic, collectively run performance space founded in 1980 by feminist and lesbian artists - the 2026 edition focused on embodied memory, play, and practical care infrastructure. Building on participant feedback from the inaugural year, the course integrated weekly actionable practice, including:

• Care in Action: A collaborative community healing clinic organized with a local aid hub, inviting participants skilled in bodywork, herbalism, acupuncture, and somatic practices to provide direct mutual aid.

• Radical Accessibility: Integrated ASL interpretation, tactile supports, large-print materials, and flexible pacing as foundational design elements rather than retrofitted accommodations.

• Intergenerational Storytelling: Collaborative mapping of local care networks and oral history pairings connecting youth and elders.

2025 - Community, Desire, and the Politics of Necessity

BGSQD & The Kitchen (NYC)

The inaugural revival of the Seminars in the City series convened at the Bureau of General Services - Queer Division, culminating in a final session hosted at The Kitchen. The cohort examined the criminalization of survival, gentrification, displacement, and the ethics of radical care under late capitalism.

Course Reader & Archival Presence

Course materials, participant contributions, and reflections are preserved for public research through The CLAGS Research Archive housed in the Mina Rees Library at the CUNY Graduate Center.

Select Thinkers & Texts:

• Amber Hollibaugh — My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home

• Audre Lorde — Zami: A New Spelling Of My Name & Uses of the Erotic: The Erotic as Power

• Leah Piepzna-Samarasinha — Care Work: Dreaming Disability Justice

• Alexis Pauline Gumbs — Spill: Scenes of Black Feminist Fugitivity

• Gloria Anzaldúa — Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza

• Ralph Hopkins with Gili Rappaport — They Call Me the Mayor at Riis Beach: Ralph’s Beach Parties 1994–2000

• Additional Readings: Sa’ed Atshan, Leanne Betasamosake-Simpson, CAConrad, Qwo-Li Driskill, Prentis Hemphill, Mariame Kaba, Robin Wall Kimmerer, Mia Mingus, José Esteban Muñoz, Sylvia Rivera, and Lou Sullivan.

Facilitator Commitment to Care

"I approach this role not as an expert, but as a fellow student and practitioner - learning alongside participants through curiosity, listening, and ongoing reflection."

— Gili Rappaport

As facilitator, I commit to cultivating a learning environment grounded in consent, transparency, and collective responsibility. Recognizing that care is relational and imperfect, the seminar offers multi-modal ways of engaging - through movement, conversation, writing, rest, and art - so participants can show up in ways that respect their capacity and boundaries.

In honoring Amber Hollibaugh’s legacy, this project centers pleasure, desire, and play alongside survival and struggle - holding space for tender, creative risk as an essential practice of queer life and land-based ethics.

Press, Publications & Exhibitions

• Publications:

  • 2025 Course Reader

  • 2026 Course Reader

• Interview: CLAGS: The Center for LGBTQ Studies (CUNY) Annual Report (2025)

• Collections: CLAGS Research Archive at Minna Rees Library