News from the John W. Kluge Center: TOMORROW at 4pm, Join George Chauncey for "AIDS: A Tragedy and a Turning Point"

Join Kluge Prize winner George Chauncey TOMORROW, June 27 at 4pm, for a public event looking at the legacy of the AIDS crisis and the activism surrounding it. This event will be available livestreamed and in-person in room LJ-119 of the Thomas Jefferson Building at the Library of Congress.

Free registration available here.

Today’s college students were born a decade after antiretroviral drugs turned HIV into a manageable condition. High schools, and most colleges, simply do not teach about the early years of the epidemic. But AIDS took the lives of a generation of gay male writers, activists, leaders, and ordinary people, even as it also set the stage for changes to come by prompting a new wave of militant activism and leading unprecedented numbers of people to come out. As part of a series of public programs on the broader theme of “Through History to Equality,” Kluge Prize winner George Chauncey will moderate a panel discussion addressing the impact of AIDS prior to the development of antiretroviral drugs, along with the history of some of the communities that mobilized to create change.

Panelists will include:

Duane Cramer, National AIDS Memorial, on the devastation of AIDS and the AIDS Quilt as a memorial

Deborah Gould, UC Santa Cruz, on community mobilization in response to AIDS

Jafari Allen, Columbia University, on Black gay cultural responses to AIDS