We are pleased to invite you to a lecture in the American Studies Colloquium Series in the 2023/2024 Spring semester!

Todd Sekuler
(University of Zürich)

Film, AIDS, Activism: Culture Engagements that Move

Monday, April 15, 2024
at 4:45 p.m.

You can get 3 OZN points for participating in this event.

Where?

Dobra 55, room 2.118
(the building features some mobility accommodations: ramp and lift)

FACEBOOK EVENT

Who?

Todd Sekuler is Oberassistent in Popular Cultures at the Department of Social Anthropology and Cultural Studies of the University of Zürich. He has a Master in Public Health (MPH) – with a focus on sexuality, gender and health – from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health in New York City and a PhD in European Ethnology from Institut für Europäische Ethnologie at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin (HU). Sekuler was previously a post-doctoral researcher at the Institut für Europäische Ethnologie at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin in the Disentangling European HIV/AIDS Policies: Activism, Citizenship and Health (EUROPACH) and, subsequently, the “CrimScapes: Navigating citizenship through European landscapes of criminalisation” research teams. He has co-organized various events on the cultural politics of HIV/AIDS, including, most recently, the “arcHIV. A Search for Traces” and “HIVstories. Living Politics” exhibitions at the Schwules Museum in Berlin. Additional earlier engagements include a film and video series accompanying the exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe at C/O Berlin, an event on ACT UP groups in Germany at the neue Gesellschaft für bildende Kunst (nGbK), a discussion and screening on AIDS, activism and video art at Bochum University, a sound installation on religiosity and AIDS activism at the international queer audio festival ECHOS+NETZE, and a discussion on HIV/AIDS in cinema at the XPosed International Queer Film Festival.

What?

This presentation will look at the structures of feeling that guide notions of kinship in AIDS activist video works from the earliest years of the AIDS epidemic of the United States. In these videos, notions of family, lineage and inheritance are variably mobilized, negotiated and deconstructed through a range of emotions including alienation, intimacy, humor, longing and desire. Together with attendees and a special guest, filmmaker Jim Hubbard, we will view clips and discuss collectively what selected works do with us, and how such modes of feeling relate to the contemporary political moment.

Year 2024/2025

December 17: We Want Change NOW! The Feminist Manifesto in Theory and Practice

December 11, 2024

During the workshop “We Want Change NOW! The Feminist Manifesto in Theory and Practice”, Aleksandra Julia Malinowska, a doctoral candidate at the University of Warsaw,will delve into the history of feminist manifestos and their pivotal role in the women’s movement in the United States. We’ll explore how activists of the second wave of feminism used grassroots publications to raise awareness, voice the demands of emerging women’s groups, and build communication networks between organizations spread across the country. Together, we’ll analyze the literary techniques that make the manifesto genre a powerful tool for inspiring activist mobilization beyond the pages of the text.

News

ASC Offices Holiday Break

December 10, 2024

The ASC Offices and Library will be closed for the winter holiday from December 23, 2024, to January 6, 2025.

American Studies Colloquium Series

December 12: Technological Imaginaries and the Universal Ambitions of Silicon Valley

December 5, 2024

Drawing on her new book, Appropriate, Negotiate, Challenge: Activist imaginaries and the politics of digital technologies (University of California Press), in this talk Ferrari shows how these discourses, which she calls “technological imaginaries”, shape how we experience digital technologies. She discusses how, for the past 30 years, Silicon Valley tech actors have produced and popularized a specific way of thinking about digital technologies, which has become mainstream. This dominant technological imaginary brings together technocratic aspirations and populist justifications. While arising out of the peculiarities of Silicon Valley and of the American 1990s, this dominant imaginary has posited its universality by presenting its tenets as if they were global, unbiased, and equally suitable for everyone, everywhere. She argues that to really curb the socio-political influence of Big Tech companies we also need to understand, critique, and resist the power of their technological imaginary.

Year 2024/2025

10 Grudnia: Odmieńczość: Obywatelstwo Seksualne i Archiwum – Premiera Książki

December 5, 2024

Zapraszamy na dyskusję z udziałem prof. Tomasza Basiuka, prof. Agnieszki Kościańskiej i dra Jędrzeja Burszty, redaktorów książki “Odmieńczość: obywatelstwo seksualne i archiwum”, która ukaże się nakładem Wydawnictw Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego. Rozmowę poprowadzi dr Ludmiła Janion.

American Studies Colloquium Series

December 5: Reinventing the Past to Change the Future: Alt-History and Reactionary Futurity

December 5, 2024

This presentation examines “alt-history” as a mode of reactionary worldbuilding, with a focus on how far-right influencers use alternate histories to reshape public understandings of the past and galvanize political action. Through examples like Tucker Carlson’s Patriot Purge and Dinesh D’Souza’s Death of a Nation, the talk explores how reactionary narratives blend science fictional techniques with conspiracy fantasies to legitimize authoritarian politics. The discussion includes a genealogy of the right-wing myth of “liberal fascism,” tracing its evolution and role in contemporary ideological landscapes shaped by historical revisionism and speculative worldbuilding.