Fales Library: Paper Tiger Television

Archived since: Aug, 2015

Description:

Paper Tiger Television (PTTV), established in 1981, has been creating investigative and alternative media. The programs produced at PTTV inspire community productions and activism around the world. Its archive includes shows that provide critical analysis of media, educate about the communications industry and highlight issues that are absent from mainstream information sources. Through the production and distribution of public access series, media literacy/video production workshops, community screenings, videos on the website, and grassroots advocacy PTTV works to challenge and expose the corporate control of mainstream media. PTTV believes that increasing public awareness of the negative influence of mass media and involving people in the process of making media is mandatory for the long-term goal of information equity.

Subject:   Arts & Humanities,  Society & Culture,  Television--New York (State)--New York,  Paper Tiger Television Collective (Firm)

Fales Library: Richard Berkowitz

Archived since: Aug, 2016

Description:

Richard Berkowitz (b. 1955) is a gay American author, AIDS activist, and former sex worker. He graduated from Rutgers University with a degree in communications in 1977. While at Rutgers, he wrote for the campus newspaper, The Daily Targum, and organized the first gay rights protest in New Jersey in 1976. After graduation, he attended New York University's (NYU) Graduate School of Film for one year. He moved to the Chelsea neighborhood of New York and worked as a sex worker, specifically as an S&M dominant, between 1978 and 1982. In the late 1970s, Berkowitz met Dr. Joseph Sonnabend while seeking treatment at the Gay Men's Health Project clinic in New York City. In 1982, Berkowitz was diagnosed with AIDS. In laying out treatment options, Sonnabend shared his multifactorial theory of AIDS, which held that AIDS was caused by repeated exposure to sexually transmitted infections (STIs), in particular cytomegalovirus, and semen. This theory was in opposition to the more widely held theory at the time that a single, new infectious agent was the cause of AIDS. Berkowitz felt that gay men needed to know their risk of contracting AIDS and Sonnabend offered to introduce him to another of his patients with AIDS, Michael Callen, who was also interested in spreading this information to the gay community. Together, the three men are credited with creating the concept of safe sex. Berkowitz and Callen formed the support group Gay Men with AIDS and began writing about the multifactorial theory, AIDS, and safe sex. They wrote We Know Who We Are, a warning to sexually active gay men with AIDS in New York, (published in the New York Native in 1982) and the first safe sex guide, How to Have Sex in an Epidemic: One Approach, published in 1983. They began making television appearances; speaking to support groups, legislators, and others; writing about AIDS; and were founding members of the People with AIDS Coalition. Callen died in 1993 from AIDS-related complications. Sonnabend co-founded the AIDS Medical Foundation in 1983, and continued writing about AIDS issues and serving in private practice until his retirement in 2005. Berkowitz continued to write about AIDS, safe sex, and gay rights issues throughout the 1980s and into the 2000s. He returned to sex work in the late 1980s, promoting himself as a safe sex S&M dominant in Florida and New York. In 2003 he published his autobiography, Stayin' Alive, and in 2008 was the subject of Sex Positive, a documentary written and directed by Daryl Wein.

Subject:   Arts & Humanities

Poly Archives: A. Michael Noll Papers

Archived since: May, 2022

Description:

A. Michael Noll was an early pioneer in digital computer art, 3D animation, and telecommunication in the 1960s and 1970s. He received his PhD in electrical engineering from the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn in 1971. He was employed by Bell Labs for nearly 15 years, working on basic research and beginning his focus in computer art and telecommunication. In the early 1970s, he was on the staff of the President's Science Advisor at the White House and later worked at AT&T, identifying opportunities for new products and services. He was a Senior Affiliated Research Fellow at the Columbia Institute for Tele-Information at Columbia University's Business School and was a member of the adjunct faculty of the Interactive Telecommunications Program at New York University's Tisch School of the Arts. He is a professor emeritus at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism at the University of Southern CaliforniaHe and served as interim dean of USC Annenberg from 1992 to 1994. He has published over ninety professional papers, was granted six patents for his inventions at Bell Labs, and is the author of twelve books on various aspects of communications.

Tamiment-Wagner: Alliance for Cultural Democracy Records (TAM 832)

Archived since: Apr, 2024

Description:

Alliance for Cultural Democracy (ACD) was an activist arts organization active in the 1980s and 1990s. ACD began in December 1976 as the Neighborhood Arts Programs National Organizing Committee (NAPNOC). The founding meeting was held at the United Auto Workers’ Family Education Center in Black Lake, Michigan, in December 1976, bringing together two dozen community arts activists and allies from all over the country, many of whom had been supported through the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act(CETA). The organizers began publishing a newsletter, <emph render="italic">NAPNOC Notes</emph>, to maintain communication and dialogue. The organization was funded by the Department of Labor from 1977 through 1979. It grew to include over 150 cultural groups and many cultural workers based in urban, suburban, and rural settings, including muralists, theater people, videographers, craftspeople, musicians, photographers, publishers, organizers, and activists. As federal funding waned, the goals and definition of the organization evolved to encompass a broader vision of what became known as “cultural democracy”, the idea that cultural, racial, gender, national, ethnic, and other communities in global society had the right to exert their identities, practices, and arts through cultural, community, and aesthetic expressions at all levels. In 1983 the group changed its name to the Alliance for Cultural Democracy and <emph render="italic">NAPNOC Notes</emph> became <emph render="italic">Cultural Democracy</emph>, which was published on a mostly quarterly basis. Its most successful national campaigns were its efforts to promote a “Cultural Bill of Rights," as well as an effort to create an alternative to the 1992 Columbus Quincentennial. This campaign was inspired by the work of Indigenous and other BIPOC organizations in the U.S. and Latin America, and brought together a vast array of political, cultural, and community groups to counter the dominant culture’s narrative of the “discovery of the New World“ with one of resistance by Indigenous and other communities. ACD members played important roles in infusing cultural activism into organizing efforts around anti-gentrification and Central American solidarity, and also established ties with cultural activists in other countries. In the later 1980s and early 1990s, changing funding patterns for the arts, along with the urgency of the Gulf War and other national and international issues redirected much of ACD members’ energy. Additionally, the counter-quincentennial work raised concerns about how the organization addressed LGBTQ+ and BIPOC issues, and several BIPOC Board members resigned. Additionally, after the death of one of the key Board members in 1993 the organization began to slowly dissolve, formally ending around 1996.

Subject:   Arts & Humanities,  Society & Culture

University Archives RG 35: Tisch School of the Arts

Archived since: Dec, 2014

Description:

The collection consists of the website of the Tisch School of the Arts prior to its redesign in 2015.

University Archives: Interactive Telecommunications Program (RG 35.2)

Archived since: Jan, 2018

No description.