Presented by Anne C. Wheeler, PhD
Associate Professor of Composition and Rhetoric

On August 13, 1998, the headline of the Bay Area Reporter, San Francisco’s longest-running gay and lesbian newspaper, read, “No Obits.” The headline marked the fact that for the first time in 17 years, no obituaries were published in the weekly newspaper. This milestone stood in stark contrast to the height of the AIDS pandemic, during which up to 31 obituaries were published in a single weekly issue. These obituaries, a corpus of individual remembrances, ultimately coalesce as powerful representation of how many individuals lived and died from AIDS during 17 years of unceasing discourse on death. In this talk, Anne Wheeler provides the results of a qualitative analysis of the 8,512 obituaries that were printed during this time period in order to demonstrate how they served as sites of rhetorical resistance that allowed the deceased a final opportunity to contribute, posthumously, to the public sphere.

This event, part of the Colloquium Series of the Departments of Literature, Writing, and Journalism and Humanities and Social Sciences, is free and open to the Springfield College community.

For more information, please contact Anne C. Wheeler at awheeler2@springfield.edu or (413) 748-3606.

A Wellness Passport Event