HIV/AIDS Archives - Public Seminar

Activism

“Brother Doc,” a Co-Conspirator for Justice

For a physician who supported armed struggle in the 1970s and 1980s, a commitment to radical anti-racism was everything

July 30, 2020 • by Susan M. Reverby

But what kind of action? There have always been Americans who could imagine a world of racial equality and justice, and who worked in cross-racial alliances to make it happen, not just -- as we do today -- at a street protest, or by issuing heartfelt statements of support, or ...

“Brother Doc,” a Co-Conspirator for Justice

Public Health

The Hidden Structural Racism in the American Response to Public Health Emergencies

Facing a disproportionate death rate among Black people from COVID-19, President Trump shrugs: “What, me, worry?”

July 23, 2020 • by R. Drew Smith

When faced with emerging epidemics related to HIV/AIDS in the 1970s, to crack cocaine in the 1980s, to Ebola in 2014 and 2018, the U.S. government was slow to intervene on behalf of homosexual populations, or urban poor populations, or African populations, who respectively were most-affected by those public health ...

The Hidden Structural Racism in the American Response to Public Health Emergencies

Interviews

“Many Gay Men of My Generation Weren’t Planning to Die of Old Age”

Lambda Literary Award–winning poet Mark Bibbins on his new collection, 13th Balloon

June 20, 2020 • by Mark Bibbins and Evangeline Riddiford Graham

“Authoritarian political ideologies have a vested interest in promoting fear,” Susan Sontag wrote in 1989. “Real diseases are useful material.” In AIDS and Its Metaphors, Sontag argued that the virus had been stigmatized as a plague, “a disease to be regarded both as something incurred by vulnerable ‘others’ and as (potentially) ...

“Many Gay Men of My Generation Weren’t Planning to Die of Old Age”

Past Present

Larry Kramer, Playwright and AIDS Activist

Past Present Podcast, Episode 233

June 16, 2020 • by Nicole Hemmer, Natalia Mehlman Petrzela and Neil J. Young

Here are some links and references mentioned during this week’s show: Pioneering AIDS activist Larry Kramer died this month. Natalia referred to this Vulture interview about Kramer’s legacy. Neil commented on Kramer’s autobiographical play, The Normal Heart. In our regular closing feature, What’s Making History: Natalia recommended the Netflix documentary, Crip Camp: A ...

Public Health

Pandemic as a Natural Evolutionary Phenomenon

Human beings forget that they will always share the planet with microbes

May 21, 2020 • by Joshua Lederberg

Pasteur and Darwin Charles Darwin’s role in nineteenth-century thought, how that shapes our own thinking about man’s place in Nature, is too well-known and oft-discussed to bear extensive elaboration on my part. His contemporary, Louis Pasteur, is a culture hero, world-renowned for the human benefits of his germ theory of disease: the ...

Pandemic as a Natural Evolutionary Phenomenon

Literature

“Our War Would Be With a Virus”

The New School poet’s latest collection retraces the losses of the AIDS crisis

March 9, 2020 • by Mark Bibbins

From 13th Balloon What might anyone have made of you and me as babies born into the mess and ferment of the late 1960s Working-class babies born to parents who themselves were babies during World War II Were they worried already about Vietnam or about some other monstrous hand that would grab us from our cribs by our feet and throw us into the war that ...

Feature

Were We There to Talk about AIDS, or Not?

One woman’s journey in psychotherapy

April 4, 2018 • by Margaret Kim Peterson

This excerpt is part of a longer essay. To read the full essay please click here. Introduction. In January of 1990 I was shocked when the Korean immigrant and Harvard-educated molecular biologist I had recently begun dating said he had something to tell me: he was HIV-positive. The shock never really subsided, ...

Were We There to Talk about AIDS, or Not?

Feature

Gay Liberation

An excerpt from, ‘Before AIDS’

March 14, 2018 • by Katie Batza

Public Seminar (PS) spoke to Katie Batza (KB) about her new book, Before AIDS, which charts the rise and development of a national gay community-based health network in the US, beginning in the 1970s. PS: What prompted you to write Before Aids? KB: I initially wanted to write a history of how local gay community health ...

Feature

Bringing AIDS Home

A Queer Look at the History of an Epidemic

September 18, 2017 • by Dan Royles

AIDS at Home includes a wide range of materials, from archival documents and ephemera to documentary film and fine art. Visitors can watch Buddies for Life, a short documentary about the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) buddy program, in which volunteers provided help and companionship to people living with AIDS. ...