Public Works: How Ordinary People Can Change the World

Public Works: How Ordinary People Can Change the World

Lessons from Creating the ACT UP Oral History Project, with Sarah Schulman

Following the Humanities Without Boundaries conversation with Sarah Schulman on Thursday, Nov. 6, we invite faculty, staff, and graduate students to attend a small-group discussion with Schulman about the ACT UP Oral History Project, an archive of 187 interviews with members of ACT UP, the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power, New York. The project makes evident the full, diverse, and richly-multifaceted history of the organization. Schulman and her collaborators wish to disseminate this information as widely as possible to foster study, research, and discussion of ACT UP’s legacy to promote greater civic engagement and present comprehensive, complex, and human portraits of the people behind ACT UP.

The oral history project is designed to remind us that ordinary people can change the world—and to explore and make known exactly how they did it. At this Public Works event, Schulman will share her experiences and lessons in coordinating the ACT UP project and provide guidance for people working on or interested in their own oral history projects. The workshop will be moderated by Danielle Weindling, Assistant Director, Center for the Humanities.

Space is limited and registration is required. To join, please send an email to rsvp@humanities.wisc.edu with your name and affiliation. Light refreshments will be provided.

Sarah Schulman is a novelist, playwright, nonfiction writer, screenwriter, and AIDS historian.  She is the author of 21 books, most recently The Fantasy and Necessity of Solidarity (Thesis Books/Penguin Random House.) Schulman holds an endowed chair in Creative Writing at Northwestern University and is on the Advisory Board of Jewish Voice for Peace.