The Queer Studies Network is honoured to welcome the award-winning activist and author Sarah Schulman for a live online event. From her 1990s novels Rat Bohemia and People in Trouble, to more recent works of ground-breaking non-fiction like The Gentrification of the Mind and Conflict is Not Abuse, Schulman has long been a leading voice in queer literature and politics. Her new book Let the Record Show: A Political History of ACT UP New York, 1987-1993 has been described by the New York Times as a ‘masterpiece tome: part sociology, part oral history, part memoir, part call to arms’. The book challenges familiar narratives about AIDS activism as a victory attained by individuals, and instead shows how a broad coalition with constantly changing leadership won significant victories for people with AIDS. In documenting the vital work of a broad range of white men, working with and next to women and people of colour, Schulman provides an urgent intervention and a timely reconceptualising of this moment in queer history, one that creates space for us to reflect upon the ongoing fight against the epidemic.
In conjunction with this event, we will also be running a virtual screening of Schulman and Jim Hubbard’s 2012 documentary United in Anger: A History of ACT UP at 5pm on Tuesday 15th June.
Sarah Schulman is a novelist, playwright, screenwriter, nonfiction writer and AIDS historian. LET THE RECORD SHOW is her 20th book.
