2017 is the 30th anniversary of the founding of ACT UP, the international advocacy group fighting to end the AIDS crisis. To coincide with this anniversary, a one-day conference will be held at the University of York on June 1st and 2nd, 2017 which will bring together academics from a variety of disciplines to reflect upon what has changed, and what has not, in the past thirty years.

Preceding the conference, we will screen 'United in Anger: A History of ACT UP' which will be followed by a conversation with director Jim Hubbard and Dr. Monica Pearl. Alongside the conference and screening, a selection of interviews from the ACT UP Oral History Project will be exhibited.

June 1, 2017
14:00: Opening of the exhibition of the ACT UP Oral History Project
Treehouse, Berrick Saul Building

15:00: Screening of "United in Anger: A History of ACT UP," followed by a conversation with director Jim Hubbard and Dr. Monica Pearl

June 2, 2017
9:30 Registration, Bowland Auditorium, Berrick Saul Building

10:00 - 11:00: Session I
Dr. Virginia Solomon, Then and Now – AIDS and Riot
Tommaso Speretta, Alternative AIDS Video, 1981-1995: notes for an annotated videography

11:00 - 11:15 Coffee Break

11:15-12:30: Session II
Theodore Gordon, Paranoia and Sexual Difference: Representation of Women with AIDS
Prof. Jason Edwards, Sodomising Edward Bulwer Lytton, or, Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Last Days of Pompeii

12:30 - 13:30 Lunch Break

13:30 - 14:30: Session III
Dr. Sam Ferguson, Private writing, political action: Written AIDS Testimony in France, 1986–1993
Dr. Fiona Johnstone, Picturing AIDS ‘post-crisis’: curating AIDS in contemporary America

14:30 - 14:45 Coffee Break

14:45 - 15:45: Session IV
Dr. Sophie Junge, Art is Still Not Enough. Images of AIDS between Artistic Recognition and Political Mobilization
Dr. Michael Upton, ACTING UP over AZT: AIDS and ‘biocapital’

15:45-16:00: Break

16:00 - 17:30 Keynote Address
Dr. Monica Pearl