Thursday, October 22, 5-6:30pm
AIDS and Remembrance: Days of 1983
William B. Rubenstein, Professor of Law, Harvard Law School

William B. Rubenstein is Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where he writes and teaches courses on litigation and sexual orientation law. After graduating from Harvard Law School, Professor Rubenstein was awarded a Harvard Fellowship in Public Interest Law to help start an AIDS Project at the national office of the American Civil Liberties Union. Professor Rubenstein was a staff attorney with the ACLU’s national LGBT and AIDS Projects from 1987-1990 and Director of those Projects from 1990-1995. During that time, he taught courses on sexual orientation and AIDS law at Harvard, Yale, and Stanford Law Schools, editing the first law school casebook in the area, now entitled, Cases and Materials on Sexual Orientation and The Law. From 1997-2007, Professor Rubenstein was a Professor at UCLA School of Law where he started the Williams Institute (on Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy). He joined the Harvard faculty in 2007.

Thursday, October 29, 4-5:30pm
Is ACT UP History?: A Movement That’s Over, A Crisis That Isn’t
Christopher Capozzola, Associate Professor of History, MIT

Christopher Capozzola is Associate Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he teaches courses on political and legal history, cultural history, and the history of race, gender, and class. He graduated from Harvard College and completed his Ph.D. at Columbia University in 2002. He has held fellowships from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Carnegie Scholars Program, and the Social Science Research Council. Professor Capozzola’s first book, Uncle Sam Wants You: World War I and the Making of the Modern American Citizen (Oxford UP) examines the relationship between citizens, voluntary associations, and the federal government on the WWI home front. His publications on U.S. social movements include "A Very American Epidemic" (Radical History Review, Winter 2002), based on oral history interviews with AIDS Quilt activists, including founder Cleve Jones. Professor Capozzola has published articles and essays in American Quarterly, Georgetown Law Journal, Journal of American History, Journal of Women’s History, New England Quarterly, and Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, as well in popular periodicals including Bay Windows, The Boston Globe, Christian Science Monitor, The Nation, and The Philadelphia Inquirer.

Thursday, November 12, 4-5:30pm
The Power of AIDS Activism: Defying the Convergence of the Forbidden and the Disenfranchised
Amber Hollibaugh, Queer Activist and Author, My Dangerous Desires

Amber Hollibaugh is the Chief Officer of Elder and LBTI Women’s Services at the Howard Brown Health Center in Chicago, IL. She has served as Senior Strategist for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force (NGLTF), as well as Director of National Initiatives at Services and Advocacy for GLBT Elders (SAGE). Before joining the staff at SAGE, she spent seven years at Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC), where she was Director of the Lesbian AIDS Project and National Director of Women’s Services. She also served as Director of Education for the New York City Commission on Human Rights, AIDS Division. A well-known activist, writer, artist, public intellectual, and community organizer, she has worked on issues of sexuality, class, race, and gender at the intersection of desire and hazard and was a founding member and is now a board member of Queers for Economic Justice. The recipient of the Dr. Susan B. Love award for outstanding achievement in women’s health, she is the author of My Dangerous Desires: A Queer Girl Dreaming Her Way Home (Duke University Press, 2002), and the director and co-producer of The Heart of the Matter, a documentary film focusing on women’s sexuality, denial, and risk for HIV and AIDS. The film won the 1994 Sundance Film Festival’s Freedom of Expression Award and premiered on PBS’s prestigious POV film series.

Thursday, November 19, 4-5:30pm
HIV/AIDS Activism in African American Communities: The Limits of Self-Help
Evelynn M. Hammonds, Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science and of African and African American Studies, and Dean of Harvard College

Evelynn M. Hammonds is the Barbara Gutmann Rosenkrantz Professor of the History of Science and of African and African American Studies, and Dean of Harvard College. She is the co-author, with Rebecca Herzig, of The Nature of Difference: The Sciences of “Race” from Jefferson to Genomics (MIT Press, 2008), and Childhood's Deadly Scourge: The Campaign to Control Diphtheria in New York City, 1880–1930 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999). She has published articles on the history of disease, race and science, African American feminism, African American women and the epidemic of HIV/AIDS, and analyses of gender and race in science and medicine. Professor Hammonds's current work focuses on the intersection of scientific, medical, and socio-political concepts of race in the United States. She is completing a history of biological, medical, and anthropological uses of racial concepts, entitled The Logic of Difference: A History of Race in Science and Medicine in the United States, 1850–1990.

Thursday, December 3, 4-5:30pm
Full Equality and How We Get There
Jarrett Barrios, President, Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD)

Jarrett Barrios is President of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD). At 40 years of age, Barrios is the youngest leader of GLAAD and, as a Cuban-American, he is also the first head of a national LGBT organization fluent in both Spanish and English. Barrios began his work in LGBT advocacy as a student at Harvard College, where he co-chaired the school’s LGBT student organization. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he was a member of Queer Nation and worked for the Boston Gay and Lesbian Anti-Violence Project. He has also served on the boards of the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network, Gay and Lesbian Advocates and Defenders, and the Greater Boston Lesbian and Gay Political Alliance. He was the first openly gay person and the first Latino elected to the Massachusetts State Senate, where he represented a largely white, Catholic, and working-class district. As a State Senator, Barrios was an inspiring and outspoken advocate for marriage equality and the full rights of all gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender citizens. He is an accomplished fundraiser and manager who broke fundraising records in his election campaigns and also managed a multi-million dollar budget at the Blue Cross/Blue Shield Foundation of Massachusetts. He is married to Doug Hattaway, his partner of 16 years, and they are raising two teenage sons.