Moving Politics: Emotion and ACT UP's Fight Against AIDS. By Deborah B. Gould. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2009. 536p. $65.00 cloth, $23.00 paper.

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 397-398 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rafael de la Dehesa

Deborah Gould's volume is a beautifully written account of direct-action AIDS activism in the United States from its emergence in the mid-1980s through its decline in the early 1990s. The story of ACT UP, the central focus of the work, illuminates the complex history of both the AIDS epidemic and the political dynamics of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) communities at a key moment of transition. Founded during the conservative backlash of the Reagan era and active through the conservative turn in LGBT politics of the early Clinton years (with the prioritization of questions like military service), the group's confrontational tactics, radical discourse, and political successes prove something of an anomaly. Explaining this anomaly is Gould's central concern, and in doing so, she offers a compelling argument for the importance of addressing affect and emotion in the study of social movements, providing a carefully nuanced conceptual framework to do so.

Author(s):  
Emily K. Hobson

Narratives of the LGBT past have been constrained by exceptionalist narratives of Stonewall, the 1960s, and ACT UP. These narratives describe gay and lesbian radicalism as disappearing soon after 1969 and obscure the genealogies that fostered AIDS activism. The history of the gay and lesbian left counters these narratives, showing that across the 1970s and 1980s, radicals pursued an interconnected politics in which sexual liberation was the theory and radical solidarity the practice. Gay and lesbian leftists drew anti-imperialism from Black radicalism and the anti-war movement, engaged socialist and women of color feminisms, and redefined queer community by tying it to Central American solidarity. By the end of the Cold War these influences proved central to direct action against AIDS.


Author(s):  
Terry L. Birdwhistell ◽  
Deirdre A. Scaggs

Since women first entered the University of Kentucky (UK) in 1880 they have sought, demanded, and struggled for equality within the university. The period between 1880 and 1945 at UK witnessed women’s suffrage, two world wars, and an economic depression. It was during this time that women at UK worked to take their rightful place in the university’s life prior to the modern women’s movement of the 1960s and beyond. The history of women at UK is not about women triumphant, and it remains an untidy story. After pushing for admission into a male-centric campus environment, women created women’s spaces, women’s organizations, and a women’s culture often patterned on those of men. At times, it seemed that a goal was to create a woman’s college within the larger university. However, coeducation meant that women, by necessity, competed with men academically while still navigating the evolving social norms of relationships between the sexes. Both of those paths created opportunities, challenges, and problems for women students and faculty. By taking a more women-centric view of the campus, this study shows more clearly the impact that women had over time on the culture and environment. It also allows a comparison, and perhaps a contrast, of the experiences of UK women with other public universities across the United States.


2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison Sivak

Lewis, J. P. Black Cat Bone: the Life of Blues Legend Robert Johnson. Illus. Gary Kelley. Mankato: Creative Editions, 2006. Print.Although this book is designed as a large-format picture book, Black Cat Bone is more likely to appeal to older children (middle school and adolescents) as a poetic text, with its rich illustrations and unusual narrative flow. The foreword of the book addresses a reader who knows some about blues musicians, as well as has some hint of the history of blues music in the United States. The language of the text is not trying to tell a linear story, but to be more evocative of a time, and of some of the historical context. The book actually has several texts: the address of the historical context that bookends the work, the bluesy poems which make up the majority of the text, excerpts from Johnson's own lyrics, and a footer running throughout the book, which provides aphoristic summaries of Johnson's story: “He was destined for legend not a field hand's work.” Each text tells a part of the interpretation of Johnson's story. With the images, it adds up to a faceted narrative of the man and his musical legacy. The illustrations alternate between impressionistic pastels in deep dark colours, reinforcing the air of mystery around Johnson's life as understood by popular culture. Kelley's other illustrative style is reminiscent of Indonesian shadow-puppets, dramatic and exaggerated in their execution. A particularly lovely example is show in full on the cover, a depiction of Johnson and the devil facing each other, each with a hand on the guitar. This image is reproduced in the text, split by the page turn in a clever design turn. Recommended: 3 stars out of 4Reviewer: Allison SivakAllison Sivak is the Assessment Librarian at the University of Alberta Libraries. She is currently pursuing her PhD in Library and Information Studies and Elementary Education, focusing on how the aesthetics of information design influence young people’s trust in the credibility of information content.


Author(s):  
Emily K. Hobson

Although AIDS direct action is generally described as beginning with ACT UP, it first developed as activists drew tactics and ideas from Central American solidarity and the anti-nuclear movement. Anti-militarism catalyzed AIDS direct action in the Bay Area; its influences appeared in 1984, took on force in 1986, and by 1987 shaped national networks of AIDS activism. The groups Citizens for Medical Justice and the AIDS Action Pledge paved the way for the formation of ACT UP/San Francisco and Stop AIDS Now Or Else. AIDS direct action stood as the culmination of the gay and lesbian left even as it marked the start of a new queer politics. However, these radical genealogies were obscured with the deaths of many activists.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Charles R. Figley ◽  
Jeffrey S. Yarvis ◽  
Bruce A. Thyer

Social workers have a long, proud history of service in most branches of the United States military, often as commissioned officers with graduate practice degrees (Daley, 2003). Samuel Washington (1957), an active duty social worker, was the first to discuss the history and function of social work in military service. He noted that in 1945 social work was fully integrated as a separate specialty in the U.S. military and “its subsequent development to its present level [i.e., 1957] have been recognized as instrumental in maintaining and conserving the defense strength of its country” (p. 1)....


1997 ◽  
Vol 38 (1) ◽  
pp. 123-177
Author(s):  
A. D. ROBERTS

This expensive little book, originally a thesis for the University of Illinois, is an artless but sometimes perceptive account of certain library endeavours in British East and West Africa, based on archival and library research in Britain and the United States. It is not a history of libraries per se so much as a study of instances of external aid to the development of libraries beyond the sphere of teaching institutions. In the 1930s, one such source – as in so much of the English-speaking world – was the Carnegie Corporation. Grants to Kenya underpinned a system of circulating libraries, the depot for which was housed in the McMillan Memorial Library, Nairobi; membership was confined to whites until 1958. In Lagos, Alan Burns, as chief secretary, secured a grant to start an unsegregated but fee-charging library: in 1934 just 43 of its 481 members were African. The grant ended in 1935, but the library was still going forty years later.


2019 ◽  
Vol 48 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-27
Author(s):  
Gabriela Baeza Ventura ◽  
Lorena Gauthereau ◽  
Carolina Villarroel

AbstractThis article focuses on the work and efforts put forth by the University of Houston’s Recovering the US Hispanic Literary Heritage program (Recovery) to create the first digital humanities center for US Latina/o Research: #usLdh. Recovery is a program to locate, preserve, and make available the written legacy of Latinas/os in the United States since colonial times until 1960. Through 27 years of successful work Recovery has not only been able to inscribe the excluded history of Latinas/os, but also has created an inclusive and vast digital repository that facilitates scholarship in this area of studies. This article focuses on the importance of recovery work in the writing, teaching, and understanding of history and considers how local personal archives have helped to fill in the gaps of mainstream history. We will detail the goals and challenges of this mission, as well as the importance of educating the community in digital methods that preserve and disseminate minority voices.


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