Dennis Altman

Last updated

Dennis Altman
AM
Born
Dennis Patkin Altman

(1943-08-16) 16 August 1943 (age 82)
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Alma mater Cornell University
Occupation(s)Academic, activist

Dennis Patkin Altman AM (born 16 August 1943) is an Australian academic and gay rights activist.

Contents

Early life and education

Dennis Patkin Altman was born in 1943 [1] [2] in Sydney, New South Wales to Jewish immigrant parents, and spent most of his childhood in Hobart, Tasmania. [3]

In 1964 he won a Fulbright scholarship to Cornell University, where he began working with American gay activists. [4]

Career

Returning to Australia in 1969, Altman taught politics at the University of Sydney. In 1985, he became a lecturer at La Trobe University, where he later became a professor of politics. He was appointed Visiting Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University in January 2005. [5]

In 2006 Altman was a professorial fellow in the Institute for Human Security at La Trobe University. [6] In 2009 he was appointed director of the Institute for Human Security at La Trobe University. [7] [ better source needed ]

Other activities

Altman supports organisations dedicated to creating a better life for homosexuals, serving on the Australian National Council on AIDS. He was president of the AIDS Society of Asia and the Pacific as of the 2005 Kobe ICAAP Congress. [8] In October 2006 he was elected to the board of Oxfam Australia. [9] In 2010 he stepped down from this position.[ citation needed ]

Altman is a longtime patron of the Australian Queer Archives. He has been deeply involved with government and community responses to HIV/AIDS in Australia and the Asia Pacific. He wrote In the Mind of America (1986) and Power and Community (1994), regarding the topics of HIV and AIDS. [10]

He was president of the AIDS Society of Asia and the Pacific (2001–2005), and has been a member of the governing council of the International AIDS Society. In 2005 he was visiting professor of Australian studies at Harvard. In July 2006, he was listed by The Bulletin as one of the 100 most influential Australians ever. [6]

Recognition

In June 2008, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia. [11]

At the APCOM HERO Awards 2021, he was awarded the Shivananda Khan Award for Extraordinary Achievement. [12]

Writings and speeches

In 1971, Altman published his first book, Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation [13] – considered an important intellectual contribution to the ideas that shaped gay liberation movements in the English-speaking world. Among his ideas were "the polymorphous whole" [14] and his posing of the notion of "the end of the homosexual", in which the potential for both heterosexual and homosexual behaviour becomes a widespread cultural and psychological phenomenon. [15]

Altman was also a contributor to the New York City based gay liberation newspaper Come Out! , published by the Gay Liberation Front, writing two articles for them in 1970 and their last issue in 1972. [16] [17]

Altman has delivered speeches on the topic of sexual liberation. One of his most notable speeches was delivered during the first Gay Liberation Group meeting at the University of Sydney on 19 January 1972. It was called "Human beings can be much more than they have allowed themselves to be". [18]

In 1997 Altman wrote an essay, "Global gaze/global gays", in which he proposes that there are cultural connections between homosexuals in different countries and there is a nascent global gay culture. [19]

In his preface to the 1995 republication of his 1946 novel The City and the Pillar , [20] US author Gore Vidal wrote that Altman had taken a copy of the book back with him to Australia around 1970, but it was seized at Sydney Airport. The book was subsequently declared obscene by a judge who observed that the Australian obscenity law was "absurd", thus leading to it being repealed sometime later. [21] [ better source needed ] In 2005 Altman published Gore Vidal's America, a study of Vidal's writings on history, politics, sex, and religion.[ citation needed ]

Personal life

In March 2013 Altman wrote about the death of his partner of 22 years, Anthony Smith, who died from lung cancer in November 2012. [22]

Publications

References

  1. ↑ Hurley, Michael (2006). "Dennis Altman". In Gerstner, David A. (ed.). Routledge International Encyclopedia of Queer Culture (1 ed.). Routledge. p. 38. ISBN   9780415306515 . Retrieved 17 July 2022.
  2. ↑ Who's Who in Australia. Mediality. 2022.
  3. ↑ Slattery, Luke. "Dennis Altman, dynamo in the creation of gay power in Australia, explains why he had to write his biography now", The Australian Magazine, 8–9 February 1997.
  4. ↑ The far left in Australia since 1945. Piccini, Jon, Smith, Evan, 1981–, Worley, Matthew. Abingdon, Oxon. 2018. ISBN   978-0-429-48734-7. OCLC   1044734303.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: others (link)
  5. ↑ "Dennis Altman appointed to Harvard Chair of Australian Studies". La Trobe University. Archived from the original on 26 August 2006. Retrieved 14 March 2006.
  6. 1 2 "100 Most Influential Australians". The Sydney Morning Herald, June 2006. 27 June 2006.
  7. ↑ La Trobe University website Staff Profile, Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe University Retrieved 10 August 2013
  8. ↑ "Message from ASAP". Seventh International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific. Retrieved 30 July 2006.
  9. ↑ "Message from ASAP". Board election results for Oxfam Australia, 2006. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 5 November 2006.
  10. ↑ Gerstner, David (2006). Queer Culture. Routledge. pp.  1. ISBN   0-415-30651-5.
  11. ↑ "Australian honour awards". Australian Government, June 2008.
  12. ↑ "APCOM 2021 Awards". APCOM, November 2021. 26 November 2021.
  13. ↑ Altman, Dennis (1993). Homosexual : oppression and liberation. New York: New York University Press. ISBN   0-8147-0623-1. OCLC   27431520.
  14. ↑ Altman, D. Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation, Sydney, Angus & Robertson (1972), pp. 58–95 ( ISBN   0-207-12459-0)
  15. ↑ Altman, D. Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation, Sydney, Angus & Robertson (1972), pp. 216–228
  16. ↑ Altman, Dennis (December 1970). "One Man's Gay Liberation" (PDF). Come Out!. Vol. 1, no. 7. Gay Liberation Front. p. 20. OCLC   14078148.
  17. ↑ Altman, Dennis (1972). "Coming Out In Australia" (PDF). Come Out!. Vol. 2, no. 8. Gay Liberation Front. p. 15. OCLC   14078148.
  18. ↑ The speech, Coming Out in the Seventies, was reproduced at the Forum on sexual liberation by Altman (1979), p. 16
  19. ↑ Altman, Dennis, "Global gaze/global gays", GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 1997
  20. ↑ Vidal, Gore (1995). The city and the pillar. New York: Random House. p. 310. ISBN   0-679-43699-5.
  21. ↑ Reuters, "Sydney Judge Terms ‘Brechinridge’ Filthy", New York Times, 17 April 1970
  22. ↑ Altman, Dennis, "Life after Anthony", Sydney Morning Herald , 9 March 2013.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.