University of Minnesota Press

What are we leaving behind, forgetting, and obscuring as we remember AIDS activist pasts? VIRAL CULTURES is the first book to critically examine the archives that have helped preserve and create the legacy of AIDS activism of the 1980s and 1990s. Marika Cifor charts the efforts activists, artists, and curators have made to document the work of AIDS activism in the US and the infrastructure developed to maintain it, with attention on large institutional archives such as the New York Public Library, and those developed by community-based organizations such as ACT UP and VISUAL AIDS. This book explores the act of saving this activist past and reanimating it in the digital age. Cifor is joined here in conversation by Cait McKinney, K.J. Rawson, and Theodore (Ted) Kerr.Participant bios:Marika Cifor is a feminist scholar of archival and digital studies. Cifor is assistant professor in the Information School and adjunct faculty member in gender, women, and sexuality studies at the University of Washington. She is author of Viral Cultures: Activist Archiving in the Age of AIDS.Cait McKinney is assistant professor in the School of Communication at Simon Fraser University. McKinney’s work includes media histories of LGBTQ+ activists and how they took up Internet technologies in the 1980s and 90s.K.J. Rawson is associate professor of English and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Northeastern University. Rawson is founder and director of the Digital Transgender Archive and co-chair of the editorial board of the Homosaurus, an international LGBTQ+ linked data vocabulary.Ted Kerr is a writer and artist who teaches at The New School. Kerr is a founding member of the collective What Would an HIV Doula Do?, and is coauthor, with Alexandra Juhasz, of We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production.Works and people referenced in this episode:-Vincent Chevalier and Ian Bradley-Perrin (Your Nostalgia Is Killing Me!)-Avram Finkelstein-Hil Malatino-Debra Levine-David Hirsh and Frank Moore, Visual AIDS Archive Project (visualaids.org)-Maxine Wolfe-Stephen Shapiro-Nelson Santos -Kia LaBeija (Goodnight, Kia)-Demian DinéYazhi ́ (NDN AIDS Flag)-AfterLab (University of Washington, Information School)-Anna Lauren Hoffmann-Megan Finn-Tonia Sutherland-Marika Cifor: "Presence, Absence, and Victoria's Hair: Examining Affect and Embodiment in -Trans Archives." Transgender Studies Quarterly 2, no. 4 (2015): 645-649.-Lesbian Herstory Archives-Jih-Fei Cheng, Alexandra Juhasz, and Nishant Shahani, eds. AIDS and the Distribution of Crises. Durham, NC:: Duke University Press, 2020.-Homosaurus: An International LGBTQ Linked Data Vocabulary (homosaurus.org)-Digital Transgender Archive-What Would an HIV Doula Do? Collective-PosterVirus (AIDS ACTION NOW!)-Alexandra Juhasz and Theodore (Ted) Kerr, We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production. Durham, NC:: Duke University Press, 2022-Cait McKinney, Information Activism: a queer history of lesbian media technologies. Durham, NC:: Duke University Press, 2020-ACT UP-The Archive Project (Visual AIDS)-The Artist+ Registry (Visual AIDS)-New York University Fales Library and Special Collections-ACT UP/NY Records (New York Public Library)-New York Public Library-Alex Fialho (Visual AIDS)-Eric Rhein (Visual AIDS Archive Project)-Michelle Caswell and Marika Cifor. "From human rights to feminist ethics: radical empathy in the archives." Archivaria 81, no. 1 (2016): 23-43.-Cait McKinney and Dylan Mulvin. "Bugs: rethinking the history of computing." Communication, Culture & Critique 12, no. 4 (2019): 476-498.-Marika Cifor and Cait McKinney. "Reclaiming HIV/AIDS in digital media studies." First Monday (2020).-What Does a COVID-19 Doula Do? Zine (ONE Archives at University of Southern California) https://www.onearchives.org/what-does-a-covid19-doula-do-zine/)-Latino/a Caucus (ACT UP/New York)-Julián de Mayo

Land privatization has been a longstanding and ongoing settler colonial process separating Indigenous peoples from their traditional homelands, with devastating consequences. ALLOTMENT STORIES is an edited collection that dives into this conflict, creating a complex conversation out of narratives of Indigenous communities resisting allotment and other dispossessive land schemes. The volume’s editors, Daniel Heath Justice and Jean M. O’Brien, are here to talk about the urgency of these conversations on dispossession and repossession, which are not always stories of easy heroes and easy villains; and also discuss considerations that go into publishing an edited collection.Raised in traditional Ute territory in Colorado and now living in shíshálh territory in British Columbia, Daniel Heath Justice (Cherokee Nation) is professor of Critical Indigenous Studies and English at the University of British Columbia, xwməθkwəy̓əm territory. He is author of Why Indigenous Literatures Matter and Our Fire Survives the Storm (Minnesota, 2005).Jean M. O’Brien (White Earth Ojibwe) is Distinguished McKnight and Northrop Professor in the Department of History at the University of Minnesota within Dakota homelands. Her books include Dispossession by Degrees and Firsting and Lasting (Minnesota, 2010).Episode note: Brief references are made to the book’s cover designer and acquisitions editor; they are, respectively, Catherine Casalino and Jason Weidemann.References:-General (Dawes) Allotment Act of 1887 in the United States, which allowed the federal government to break up tribal lands.-McGirt v. Oklahoma, in which the U.S. Supreme Court affirmed that the Muscogee (Creek) Nation’s reservation boundaries in current-day Oklahoma had not been extinguished by nineteenth-century allotment legislation.-Cobell v. Salazar settlement’s Land Buy-Back Program for Tribal Nations.ALLOTMENT STORIES is a volume that features contributions from Jennifer Adese, Megan Baker, William Bauer Jr., Christine Taitano DeLisle, Vicente M. Diaz, Sarah Biscarra Dilley, Marilyn Dumont, Munir Fakher Eldin, Nick Estes, Pauliina Feodoroff, Susan E. Gray, J. Kēhaulani Kauanui, Rauna Kuokkanen, Sheryl R. Lightfoot, Kelly McDonough, Ruby Hansen Murray, Tero Mustonen, Darren O’Toole, Shiri Pasternak, Dione Payne, Joseph M. Pierce, Khal Schneider, Argelia Segovia Liga, Leanne Betasamosake Simpson, Jameson R. Sweet, Michael P. Taylor, Candessa Tehee, and Benjamin Hugh Velaise. 

Elan Abrell, a cultural anthropologist and author, joins Katie Gillespie, a geographer and expert on dairy cows, to discuss animal sanctuaries and the ethics of animal care. They explore the emotional bonds between humans and rescued animals, the systemic exploitation in agricultural settings, and the commodification of animals in auctions. The conversation dives into the ethical struggles faced in sanctuary work, including species management and the interplay of animal welfare with social justice issues, highlighting the importance of empathy in their practices.

Josef Nguyen’s THE DIGITAL IS KID STUFF questions constructions of creativity, childhood, entrepreneurialism, and technological savvy, toggling between techno-pessimism and techno-utopianism in the process. The book narrates the developmental arc of a future creative laborer: from playing Minecraft, to DIY innovation with Make magazine, to selfies on Instagram, to the Creative Science Foundation and imagining technological innovations using design fiction. Nguyen is joined here in conversation by Carly Kocurek and Patrick LeMieux.Josef Nguyen (he/him) is assistant professor of critical media studies at the University of Texas at Dallas.Carly Kocurek (she/her) is associate professor of digital humanities and media studies at the Illinois Institute of Technology.Patrick LeMieux (he/him) is a media artist, game designer, electronic musician, and associate professor of cinema and digital media at the University of California, Davis.

Eco Soma proposes an art/life method of sensory tuning to the inside and the outside simultaneously. Petra Kuppers asks readers to be alert to their own embodied responses to art practice, reading contemporary performance encounters while modeling a disability culture sensitivity to living in a shared world, oriented toward socially just futures. In this episode, Kuppers joins Giovanni Aloi and Caroline Picard, coeditors of the Art after Nature series, in a conversation that begins with an embody journey and touches on questions of awareness, thought patterns, attention, capitalism, performance, language, identity, and disability culture.Petra Kuppers is a community performance artist and disability culture activist. She is professor of English and women’s and gender studies at the University of Michigan and serves on the faculty of the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts at Goddard College.Dr. Giovanni Aloi is an author, educator, and curator specializing in the representation of nature and the environment in art. Aloi is editor in chief of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture.Caroline Picard is a writer, cartoonist, curator, and executive director of Green Lantern Press.ECO SOMA is free to read online at Manifold: z.umn.edu/ecosoma-m.References in the episode include:-the umwelt (“enviroment” or “surroundings”)-taisha paggett-Tiffany King (The Black Shoals)-Yinka Shonibare

How do contemporary art and theory contemplate the “bio” of biopolitics and bioart? One of the foremost theorists of posthumanism, Cary Wolfe argues for the reconceptualization of nature in art and theory to turn the idea of the relationship between the human and the planet upside down in his new book, ART AND POSTHUMANISM. This is the inaugural volume in the new series ART AFTER NATURE, edited by Giovanni Aloi and Caroline Picard. The series fosters multidisciplinarity, creatively engaging with new and alternative discourses at the intersection of art, science, and philosophy. It engages with the politics and contradictions of the Anthropocene in order to problematize disciplines such as animal studies, posthumanism, and speculative realism, through art writing and art making.Cary Wolfe is Dunlevie Professor of English at Rice University. Wolfe has written on a range of topics including debates in animal studies and posthumanism, has authored many books, and edits the Posthumanities series for University of Minnesota Press.Dr. Giovanni Aloi is an author, educator, and curator specializing in the representation of nature and the environment in art. Aloi is editor in chief of Antennae: The Journal of Nature in Visual Culture.Caroline Picard is a writer, cartoonist, curator, and executive director of Green Lantern Press.References in the episode include:FoucaultAgambenDerridaDonna HarawayFlusserJacob von UexkullDamien HirstSteve BakerGregory BatesonEija-Liisa AhtilaNiklas Luhmann

Plastics have been a defining feature of contemporary life since at least the 1960s. Yet our proliferating use of plastics has also triggered catastrophic environmental consequences. In this second episode of a two-part series, literary scholars and contributors to the volume LIFE IN PLASTIC: ARTISTIC RESPONSES TO PETROMODERNITY discuss public health, affective politics, postplastic utopias, temporality, globalism, class, geopolitics, literature, and activism as they relate to the problem and politics of plastic. Featuring Caren Irr, Crystal Bartolovich, Christopher Breu, and Sean Grattan.Caren Irr is a professor of English at Brandeis University and author of Toward the Geopolitical Novel, Pink Pirates, and The Suburb of Dissent.Crystal Bartolovich is an associate professor of English at Syracuse University and coeditor of Marxism, Modernity, and Postcolonial Studies.Christopher Breu is professor of English at Illinois State University. He is author of Insistence of the Material and Hard-Boiled Masculinities, and coeditor of the forthcoming Noir Affect.Sean Grattan is an independent scholar and author of Hope Isn’t Stupid.Works and people referenced in the episode:Gain by Richard PowersFredric JamesonN. Katherine HaylesJane Bennett A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth OzekiChris JordanSylvia WynterThomas More’s Utopia

Plastics have been a defining feature of contemporary life since at least the 1960s. Yet our proliferating use of plastics has also triggered catastrophic environmental consequences. Plastics are derived from petrochemicals and enmeshed with the global oil economy, and they permeate our consumer goods and their packaging, our clothing and buildings, our bodies and minds. In this first episode of a two-part series, contributors to the volume LIFE IN PLASTIC: ARTISTIC RESPONSES TO PETROMODERNITY discuss plasticity and myth, stretchy superheroes, how plastic became gendered, plastic as a colonizing force, plastic in art and everyday life, and more. Featuring Caren Irr, Lisa Swanstrom, Jennifer Wagner-Lawlor, and Daniel Worden.Caren Irr is a professor of English at Brandeis University and author of Toward the Geopolitical Novel, Pink Pirates, and The Suburb of Dissent.Lisa Swanstrom is an associate professor of English at the University of Utah, coeditor of Science Fiction Studies, and author of Animal, Vegetable, Digital.Jennifer A. Wagner-Lawlor is professor of English and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies at Pennsylvania State University. She is author of Postmodern Utopias and co-curator of Plastic Entanglements.Daniel Worden is associate professor of interdisciplinary humanities at the Rochester Institute of Technology and author of Masculine Style, editor of The Comics of Joe Sacco, and coeditor of Oil Culture and Postmodern/Postwar—and After.Works and people referenced in the episode:Catherine MalabouRoland BarthesThrough the Arc of the Rain Forest by Karen Tei YamashitaThe Drought by J.G. BallardMutant 59: The Plastic EatersCovehithe by China MiévilleArtist Pinar YoldasPlastic by Doug Wagner and Daniel HillyardGreat Pacific (comic, 16-issue series)The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin

In inspired and incisive writing the contributors to WE ARE MEANT TO RISE speak unvarnished truths not only to the original and pernicious racism threaded through the American experience but also to the deeply personal, bearing witness to one of the most unsettling years in the history of the United States. This episode features Carolyn Holbrook, David Mura, Douglas Kearney, Melissa Olson, Said Shaiye, and Kao Kalia Yang. It is a recording from a live event at Next Chapter Booksellers in St. Paul, MN, on November 29, 2021. Minor edits and adjustments have been made for sound quality; some volume adjustment might be needed from time to time.We Are Meant to Rise: Voices for Justice from Minneapolis to the World can be purchased at Next Chapter Booksellers. https://www.nextchapterbooksellers.com/book/9781517912215Carolyn Holbrook is founder and director of More Than a Single Story, as well as founder of SASE: The Write Place. She is a writer, educator, and an advocate for the healing power of the arts.David Mura has written ten books, including the memoirs Turning Japanese (a New York Times Notable Book) and Where the Body Meets Memory. He teaches at VONA, a writers' conference for writers of color, and has worked with Alexs Pate's Innocent Classroom.Douglas Kearney has published seven collections, including Sho; the award-winning Buck Studies; and a collection of libretti, Someone Took They Tongues. He teaches creative writing at the University of Minnesota.Melissa Olson is an Indigenous person of mixed Anishinaabe and Euro-American heritage, a tribal citizen of the Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe. Melissa has worked as a writer and producer of independent public media at KFAI Fresh Air Community Radio in Minneapolis.Said Shaiye is a Somali writer working on his MFA degree at the University of Minnesota. He is author of Are You Borg Now?Kao Kalia Yang is an award-winning Hmong American writer for both children and adults. She is the Edelstein-Keller Writer in Residence in the creative writing program of the University of Minnesota.Show note: At 43:11, a minor sound glitch occurs during a reading; the full text reads: “‘Fuck-12’ in a ragged handwriting was tagged everywhere, and Black and Brown youths zipped around on their bikes observing people wandering around in shock and disbelief.”

Outsiders Within is a volume of essays, fiction, poetry, and art by transracially adopted writers from around the world who tackle difficult questions about how to survive the racist and ethnocentric worlds they inhabit. The volume was first published in 2006 and released in a new edition in 2021: a year in which reproduction and adoption politics have been spotlighted anew.In this episode, three transracial adoptees talk about what society often gets wrong about adoption.Sun Yung Shin was born in Seoul, Korea, and raised in the Chicago area. She is an award-winning poet, writer, and cultural worker, whose books include Unbearable Splendor and What We Hunger For. She lives in Minneapolis.Shannon Gibney is a writer, educator, activist, and award-winning author. She was adopted by white parents in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1975. Gibney is a professor of English at Minneapolis College. Her forthcoming novel Botched explores themes of transracial adoption through speculative memoir.JaeRan Kim was born in South Korea and adopted to the United States in 1971. She is associate professor at the University of Washington, Tacoma, in the social work program. She is a contributor to the volume The Complexities of Race (NYU Press), and her blog, Harlow’s Monkey, is one of the longest-running transracial adoption blogs in the US.