p1050 -
The ACT UP Oral History Project 2001-2015
Friday, June 2, 2017: 3:30 PM
Plaza room 2 (Hofstra University)
Dear Friends,
I am proposing to present at Berks on The ACT UP Oral History Project. This would be appropriate for an activist/academic conversation, a panel, or any of your group formats. I am also part of a proposed Roundtable on Storytelling, Memory, Imagination.
In 2001 Jim Hubbard and I co-founded The ACT UP Oral History Project. Over the next 15 years I conducted 187 long form interviews with surviving members of the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, New York. We also produced a feature length documentary UNITED IN ANGER: A History of ACT UP.
I would like to present some of my reflections on this project. This would include:
1. What story I believe the interviews reveal vs what has been culled by users.
2. The Project as a document of memory.
3. Disciplinarity: Only when the project was complete did I become aware of Academic work on Queer Oral History. When I read this work I learned that there was some natural overlap, and some strong differences in methodology.
4. The specifics of AIDS Activist culture and the group relationship.
5. The impact of the project.