CURRICULUM VITAE
J. Elizabeth Clark, Ph.D.

DISSERTATION

Miles of Poems/Culture of Blame: Advocacy, Activism and the Poetry of AIDS is a comprehensive study of seven sources of AIDS poetry: Anthologies, Writing Groups, Performances, Literary Magazines, the Internet, the Names Project AIDS Memorial Quilt, and the work of prominent AIDS poets who have published book length collections addressing HIV/AIDS. I argue that the poetry of AIDS, in the aesthetic tradition of Whitman, Sandburg, and Lindsay, creates a vehicle to mirror the national consciousness about this pandemic. AIDS poetry is democratic, written and published by professional and amateur poets alike, serving as a written witness to the many facets of life with AIDS. Accordingly, this poetry works as both advocacy and activism, accompanying and recording history, becoming history itself as the poetic works about AIDS call for social change. As a hybrid dissertation, this work includes literary criticism, original poetry, and interviews with poets Rafael Campo, Diana Cohn, Tory Dent, Rachel Hadas, River Huston, Michael Klein, Joan Logghe, Lesléa Newman and Aaron Shurin. The theoretical lens for this work calls on feminist, Marxist, and queer literary theory to analyze the poetry of AIDS.

J. Elizabeth Clark, Ph.D. (lclark@lagcc.cuny.edu)
Professor of English
Office: E-103 H in The Department of English
Phone:718.482.5665
Summer 2009 Office Hours

Site Credits: This site was last updated on 13 May 2009. Site designed and maintained by J. Elizabeth Clark. Technical Assistance provided by Delwar Sayeed and Priscilla Stadler.