Beyond data production : exploring the use of a digital archive in addressing HIV-related stigma with educators in two rural schools in KwaZulu-Natal.

Thesis (M.Ed.) - University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2009.This study outlines the use of a digital archive (a data set of staged HIV stigma photographs which were taken by Grade 8 and 9 learners) with educators in two rural schools in KwaZulu-Natal, exploring their views on using it in their teaching to address HIV and AIDS-related stigma. It responds to the need for creative and participatory methods in addressing HIV and AIDS. A qualitative, interpretive, exploratory and contextual design, using community-based participatory research methodology, was used to explore the digital archive, identify, and try out ways in which it could be used in addressing the pandemic. Data was generated using ICT-based focus group interviews involving fourteen male and female educators from two schools some - who have been participating in HIV research projects. I draw on a psycho-social framework within the ecosystemic approach, the values of community psychology and research as social change. A digital archive has potential for communication and transferring information, especially in a rural area. It also shows potential to get both females and males to work together in addressing HIV-related stigma, hence reducing the gendered skewness of this pandemic. From the educators‟ responses to using the digital archive, themes emerged around working with the content of the archive, using the archive for teaching and learning, using the archive for engaging with stigma in the school and for change in the community. The findings suggest that the use of a digital archive in a rural context can enable educators to access and share digital material, which is locally produced, relevant and realistic, to address HIV-related stigma in the school. The tool in use can facilitate community participation and be used to deepen the understanding about HIV and HIV and AIDS-related stigma to a level that has impact on individual behaviour and ultimately on the community. Despite the potential there are still challenges such as lack of access to infrastructure, literacy, and relevant content. This work is exploratory and encourages further work to explore the implications and the trends on the use of a digital archive in other school settings

Visual Archives of the AIDS Epidemic: Examining the Cultivation of Anticipatory Mourning in the Works of Nan Goldin, Cookie Mueller, and Vittorio Scarpati

In examining Putti’s Puddingand The Cookie Portfolioas independent yet intertwined projects of anticipatory mourning, this thesis identifies Witnesses: Against Our Vanishing as the artistic fulfillment of Vittorio Scarpati, Cookie Mueller, and Nan Goldin’s combined efforts to proleptically manifest collective memory within the visual archive of their shared experience with AIDS. Assisted by an exploration of both the AIDS epidemic and the three artist’s linked life histories, this study also recognizes the importance of creating an art history inclusive of social and personal history whilst considering materials so inextricably linked to their creator’s biographical contexts

Making memory work: Performing and inscribing HIV/AIDS in post-apartheid South Africa

This thesis argues that the cultural practices and productions associated with HIV/AIDS represent a major resource in the struggle to understand and combat the epidemic. Research into HIV/AIDS is dominated by biomedical scholarship, and yet in South Africa, the main drivers of the epidemic are social and economic. The cultural productions analysed in this thesis confront and illuminate many of the contradictory and unresolved questions facing HIV/AIDS research today. The primary materials analysed in this thesis are the cultural texts that explore representations and performances of HIV/AIDS in South Africa from 1995-2012. I locate experiences of HIV/AIDS in a range of theatrical, literary and visual artworks, including prose, drama and memoir, as well as film and critical work across an array of genres. More than simply surveying HIV/AIDS cultural artefacts, I offer socially and historically contextualised accounts of how stories from post-apartheid writers, performers, artists and subjects engage with HIV/AIDS within a climate hostile to their existence. In my analysis of the texts considered, I develop an argument that underlines the interventionist capacities of cultural production around HIV/AIDS. I investigate to what degree these texts aim to change consciousness and challenge the social behaviours that contribute to HIV prevalence. I argue that the most significant responses to HIV/AIDS in the last thirty years have been grassroots cultural practices that empower those who otherwise have had little agency in dictating their own circumstances and histories of the epidemic. These findings lead me to argue for a paradigm shift in HIV/AIDS research: from the widespread application of medical hegemony to the consideration of community-level cultural interventions in addressing the epidemic

The Contest of Representation: Photographic Images of Ethiopian Women in National Print Media, Development Aid Organisations and Galleries

The repetition of particular photographic narratives may homogenise women from the non-European world, particularly those from sub-Saharan Africa, who are often portrayed as victims of drought, famine, war and conflict. The research critically analyses the historical and contemporary construction of female bodies in Ethiopia through photographic images. It provides a novel overview of the least explored representational practices, by comparing photographic works commissioned by aid and development organisations with those produced by Ethiopian photographers. It specifically considers how far stereotypical representations are being challenged and deconstructed in contemporary practices of photography in Ethiopia. This project assesses over seventy photographic images, ranging from picture postcards to photojournalism and photo-essays, and seeks to critically interpret them from their site of production to their final presentation in different modes of circulation (Rose, 2003). It triangulates the meanings of images through developing an understanding of the specificity of documentary photographs, the photographers’ intent and the demands of institutions, including the national print media, development aid organisations and galleries. The research argues that some Ethiopian photographers use the photographic image as a medium to confront stereotypes in picturing poverty, drought, famine, malnutrition and HIV/AIDS, there by contesting narratives about Ethiopia and Ethiopians in the process

A place for us

“A place for us” explores constructions of the home in relation to the LGBT+ experience through reappropriated and recontextualized found images sourced from articles of print culture such as newspapers, advertisements, publications such as Better Homes and Gardens, National Geographic, Time and others printed from the 1960’s onward. As of 2020, there are no federal laws that provide universal protections against housing or employment discrimination faced by LGBT+ people in the United States. LGBT+ youth and elders struggle with securing housing and this is compounded for LGBT+ people of color. Homelessness increases exposure to trauma, drug abuse, developmental and mental health problems, sexual assault, and other problems. The desire for a home remains a political and contentious ordeal for LGBT+ people at all ages

Waring Library Society Newsletter, Fall 2021

The Fall edition includes an end of the year message from WLS President Dr. James H. Tolley and an update on the work of the Bicentennial Steering Committee from the Waring’s Curator Dr. Brian Fors. Also, in this issue, Ms. Tabitha Samuel discusses the recent acquisition of the photography of MUSC MICU Nurse Alan Hawes to the MUSC COVID-19 Archive and Ms. Brooke Fox announces plans for the Waring’s 2022 HIV/AIDS Symposium, marking the 40th anniversary of the diagnosis of the first AIDS patient in South Carolina. Finally, Ms. Anna Schuldt announces the remaining events for the 2022 Waring Library Society Lecture Series and the Student History Club, and provides insight into her work with photographing the inventory of the College of Pharmacy’s Alumni Museum.https://medica-musc.researchcommons.org/wls-newsletters/1004/thumbnail.jp

Annual Review 2011-2012

Highlights of the 2011-2012 Annual Review include our work: launching a UT-hosted website containing millions of digitized documents from the Historic Archive of the National Police of Guatemala, contributing to a MacArthur Foundation study on the use of electronic evidence in human rights cases, creating an online exhibit on Frances T. "Sissy" Farenthold, and exploring the promises and pitfalls of property rights at our eighth annual conference.UT Librarie

Queering Art Before, After and During the Sexual Revolution (1960-1980): A Study of Aesthetics and Subversion

Works produced by the queer artists in 1970s America is oftentimes not considered to be an integral part of the sexual revolution’s narrative. Not only is this problematic in that it demonstrates the heteronormative discourse that permeated liberatory pro-sex rhetoric of the time, but this exclusion also makes the LGBTQ struggle for visibility ahistorical. In this paper, I argue that notable artists who self-identified as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or queer created art that fostered gradual acceptance of the queer community before, during and after the sexual revolution, explaining that resistance to dominant paradigms were rendered unseen due to the intertwined nature of various social movements of the time, such as second-wave feminism, a reaction that would eventually lead to LGBTQ artists being marginalized again until the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s