the young people's professor: My course at NYU next semester.

I'm teaching the following course in NYU's Department of Social and Cultural Analysis (Gender and Sexuality Studies Program) next semester. I sometimes get emails from NYU undergrads who tell me that they read my blog, so if you're reading this, help me spread the word.

AIDS ACTIVISM AND
QUEER COUNTERPUBLICS

Department of Social and Cultural Analysis
(Gender and Sexuality Studies Program)
Wednesdays, 11:00-1:45 PM (Spring 2009)
Section Number: V18.0493 001
Instructor: Frank Leon Roberts

This seminar provides students with both a rigorous overview of the history of AIDS activism in the United States as well as an introduction to the frontlines of contemporary queer grassroots activism around HIV/AIDS here in New York City. Through our reading material, we will pay attention to the unique and richly varied forms that queer “activism” around the AIDS epidemic has taken including examples from photography and visual art, film and video, direct action protests, theater, literature, and cultural criticism. Throughout the semester these historical readings will be supplemented by guest lectures from representatives from community-based organizations currently engaged in activism around AIDS: the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), the Visual AIDS Project, Gay Men of African Descent, and People of Color in Crisis (P.O.C.C.). Finally, we will pay attention to the politics of AIDS activism in relationship to a variety of queer “counterpublic” communities, including cultures of sex work, hustling, pornography, clubbing, and other dissident formations. Students will be encouraged to develop research papers in the Royal S. Marks AIDS Activist Video Collection of the New York Public Library, and should be prepared to spend some time out of class in collaboration with community organizers.

Required Texts (Subject to Change):

Course Reader (Available at NYU Bookstore)
Gregg Bordowitz and James Meyer, eds. The AIDS Crisis is Ridiculous and Other Writings, 1986-2003 (MIT Press, 2004)
Douglas Crimp, Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics (The MIT Press, 2004)
Douglas Crimp and Adam Rolston, AIDS Demo Graphics (Bay Press, 2004)
Imani Harrington and Chyrell Bellamy, eds. Positive/Negative: Women of Color and HIV/AIDS: A Collection of Plays (Aunt Lute Books, 2002)
Samuel Delaney, Times Square Red, Times Square Blue (NYU Press, 1999)
Strange Bedfellows, Policing Public Sex: Queer Politics and the Future of AIDS Activism (NYU Press, 1995)
Nancy Spector, Felix Gonzalez-Torres (Guggenheim Museum, 2007)
Larry Kramer, The Normal Heart (1985)
Sarah Schulman, People in Trouble (Plume, 1991)
Amber L. Hollibaugh, My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home (Duke UP, 2000)
Gary Schneider, Desire : Contemporary Photography from the Visual AIDS Archive Project (Light Work,1999)
Alexandra Juhasz, AIDS TV: Identity, Community, and Alternative Video (Duke University Press, 1995)
Fiona Buckland, Impossible Dance: Club Culture and Queer Worldmaking (Routledge, 2002)