Dr. Marika Cifor on Viral Cultures: Activist Archiving in the Age of AIDS

Virtual/ Online Event with Professional Live Captions in English)

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Dr. Marika Cifor will speak about Viral Cultures: Activist Archiving in the Age of AIDS: the Visual AIDS’s Archive Project and Artist+ Registry. The talk will be followed by an audience Q and A.

About the speaker:

Dr. Marika Cifor is an Assistant Professor in the Information School at University of Washington and an adjunct faculty member in Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies.

She is a feminist scholar of archival studies and digital studies. My research investigates how individuals and communities marginalized by gender, sexuality, race and ethnicity, and HIV-status are represented and how they document and represent themselves in archives and digital cultures. This multidisciplinary scholarship uncovers how archives and digital technologies and cultures are shaping identities, experiences, and social movements.

Cifor's book, Viral Cultures: Activist Archiving in the Age of AIDS (University of Minnesota Press, 2022), delves deep into the archives that keep the history and work of AIDS activisms alive. It charts the efforts activists, archivists, and curators have made to document the work of AIDS activism in the United States and the infrastructure developed to maintain it and the activation of these records on contemporary digital platforms by artists, archivists, and activists. Archives allow us to remember these social movements and to revitalize the epidemic’s past in order to remake AIDS’ present and future. In addition, Cifo's research has been published in leading journals in information studies, communication and media studies, and gender and sexuality studies.

This event is part of the 5th Season of the Feminist and Accessible Publishing and Communications Technologies Speaker and Workshop Series, organized by Dr. Alex Ketchum.

Our series was made possible thanks to our sponsors: SSHRC, the Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Feminist Studies (IGSF), the DIGS Lab, Milieux, Initiative for Indigenous Futures, MILA, Dean of Arts Grant, ReQEF, and more (see our website!)

There is no fee required to attend this event. We will provide professional captions in english.

You can watch other past events here.