News Archive

IU McKinney Professor Jennifer Drobac posed for and shared her story with Zionsville, Indiana-based photographer Tom Casalini and his book: “The Queerness Doesn’t Matter.” The book was published in 2020 and photographs from the work are on exhibit at the Michael O’Brien Gallery Phoenix at the Phoenix Theatre in Indianapolis.

Professor Drobac met Casalini when he took a portrait of her and her daughter. The photographer reached out to Professor Drobac because he knew she taught LGBTQ+ rights as part of other courses at IU McKinney. The two discussed a paper she wrote in 1999, Pansexuality and the Law (5 Wm. & Mary J. Women & L. 297). In the paper, she explains how we are all sexual beings as human beings. “I offered that the divisions we perceive, which we think distinguish us, are really artificial constructs and that we are all pansexual,” Professor Drobac said. “The idea was to try to bring people together.”

Casalini had a similar impetus for his book: to bring people together for greater understanding, Professor Drobac said. An app allows the reader to hear the voice of the photo subject. “I think the photos are powerful. Tom included my voice as that of an academic and, coincidently, as someone who identifies as bi or pan,” she said. “We need more community, more understanding, and more compassion—especially as we come out of this pandemic and face the polarized politics that stain our democracy. The queerness doesn’t matter but it really does. What is different causes us all to stop and look back at ourselves—hopefully to review our perspectives and enhance them.”