Grey Fowler | 2026 I.S. Symposium
±·²¹³¾±ð:ÌýGrey Fowler
°Õ¾±³Ù±ô±ð:ÌýThe Stonewall Uprising: Memory, Myth, Movement
²Ñ²¹Âá´Ç°ù:ÌýHistory; Computer Science
´¡»å±¹¾±²õ´Ç°ù²õ:ÌýMargaret Ng; Dan Palmer
The 1969 Stonewall Uprising is one of the most impactful events and widely commemorated to queer collective memory in the United States, yet it is often misremembered as the ‘origin’ of gay rights activism. The people and events connected to the Stonewall Uprising have long since become mythology, and that process of mythologization has a significant impact to this day. This IS seeks to demythologize the Stonewall Uprising through the creation of a digital experience, and outline the causes behind the Uprising by drawing on existing scholarship and newspapers, legal cases, and other writings from the time. This project focuses on queer spaces, such as bars, and also on queer lives, societal oppression, and respectability politics practiced within gay activism at the time. The digital experience created alongside this study serves to answer the ‘What happened?’ of the Stonewall Uprising using the Unity Game Engine to recreate: the Stonewall Inn on June 28th, 1969, the beginnings of the Uprising, and some surrounding historical context and events. In answering these two questions this study seeks to shed light upon the watershed event that is the Stonewall Uprising in a way that becomes understandable to a public audience through the digital experience created in this project.
Posted in Symposium 2026 on May 1, 2026.
