Corporeal Archives of HIV/AIDS: The Performance of Relation

<p><em>Corporeal Archives of HIV/AIDS: The Performance of Relation</em>, explores how choreographers and theater artists in the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in New York City used time and space to involve their audiences experientially in the project of grieving and rebuilding in the midst of the temporal chaos of mass death and illness (crisis time). Refusing to portray HIV/AIDS as a discrete or singular phenomenon, these artists revealed how it intersected with every aspect of life, including artistic practice, thereby delinking their bodies from a singular association with pathology and death. Undertaking extensive archival research on the work and lives of choreographer Neil Greenberg (b. 1959) and poet and playwright Assotto Saint (1957-1994), this project examines the structures that differently produce the archives of these two artists, and expands Saint’s archive by conducting new oral history interviews. In light of the particular challenges of documenting performance, and the tendency for HIV/AIDS to be framed as historical, I argue that oral history is a research method that can better serve performance, given its durational, relational, improvisational, and contingent nature, which allows for multiple temporalities to coexist at once.</p>

Name thesis:degree_name

Doctor of Philosophy

Level thesis:degree_level

Doctoral

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

English

Grantor

The Graduate School and University Center of The City University of New York

Year dc:date.available

2020

Author dc:creator

• Coan, Jaime Shearn

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Kandice Chuh

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Wayne Koestenbaum
• Eric Lott
• Alexandra Juhasz
• David Román

• African American Studies
• Africana Studies
• American Literature
• American Studies
• Dance
• English Language and Literature
• Ethnic Studies
• Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies
• Performance Studies
• Theatre History
• HIV/AIDS
• New York City
• Black Performance
• Queer Performance

Repository record dc:identifier

https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/3829

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:academicworks.cuny.edu:gc_etds-4886