Interview by Dan Royles Dagmawi Woubshet’s The Calendar of Loss (Johns Hopkins, 2015) examines the politics of mourning in the early years of the AIDS epidemic both in the United States and Ethiopia. The book details the ways in which early AIDS mourners used poetry, obituaries, visual art, and direct action protest both to commemorate […]
Author: Dan Royles
Oral Histories and Alternative Archives: Disrupting the Boundaries of Queer Identities, Cultures, and Politics
Dan Royles As historians, how does the past speak to us, and when it does, how do we listen? These were the questions broached by the papers in the final session of the CLGBTH‘s conference-within-a-conference at the American Historical Association’s annual meeting. This session combined papers from the panels “Pragmatism and […]
The Other Half Has Never Been Told: AIDS and African-American History
Dan Royles Black inequality—inaugurated under slavery and maintained by protean forms of white supremacy—has been central to American society, through to the present day. But where does AIDS fit into this story? From the beginning of the recognized epidemic in the United States, communities of color—and African Americans in particular—have […]
Sexual Pleasure, AIDS, and Gay Politics
Dan Royles In 2012, the FDA approved Truvada, a popular antiretroviral drug, for use by HIV-negative people to prevent infection. The use of Truvada for HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis, or PrEP, has been controversial. Veteran AIDS activist Larry Kramer has called HIV-negative gay men who elect to take the drug “cowardly.” Some gay […]