‘Community through catastrophe’: The HIV/AIDs crisis in Darlinghurst

Associate Professor Leigh Boucher | Macquarie University

Wednesday, 24 September | 12:10pm-1:30pm

Popular and scholarly histories of HIV/AIDS in Australia have often been narrated as a story of community resilience in the face of catastrophic grief and loss. The success of the ‘Australian Response’ to the epidemic looms large in this story, where collaboration between activists and government ‘contained’ the epidemic and then provided forms of care much more quickly and compassionately than in other national contexts. Drawing on oral histories from folks who lived, worked, played, loved and lost in Darlinghurst in the 1980s and 90s, this paper examines this history from its Australian epicentre – Sydney’s inner east. Drawing on the memories of those now marginalised from the (homo)national imagining of the LGBTIQ+ community, this paper suggests that thinking ‘locally’ about the history of HIV/AIDS in Australia reveals a much more unruly and uncomfortable history of joy, humour, conflict and disregard.

ABOUT THE SPEAKER

Leigh Boucher is an Associate Professor of Modern History at Macquarie University, where his research explores questions of race, gender and sexuality in Australian political and social history. He has published work in Australian Historical Studies, History Australia, Cultural Studies, Victorian Studies, Postcolonial Studies and in numerous edited collections. His most recent co-authored book (w/ Arrow, Baird and Reynolds) is Personal Politics: Gender, Sexuality and the Remaking of Australian Citizenship (Monash 2024). He is currently working on a history of HIV/AIDs in and around Darlinghurst, which will be the topic of a podcast released with History Lab later this year.

Hybrid Event

Places to attend in-person are limited, so please register as soon as possible to reserve your place.

On Campus venue:

Vere Gordon Childe Centre,

Level 4 Madsen Building (F09)

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Image: Unsplash