Dennis Patkin Altman (born 16 August 1943) is an Australian academic and gay rights activist.[1]

Early childhood

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

Education

In 1964 he won a Fulbright scholarship to Cornell University, where he began working with American gay activists.[3]

Professions and awards

Returning to Australia in 1969, he taught politics at the University of Sydney. Later in 1985, Altman moved to La Trobe University, where he later became a professor of politics. He was appointed the Visiting Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University in January 2005.[4] Since 2009 Altman has been the director of the Institute for Human Security at La Trobe University.[5]

Altman supports organizations that are dedicated to creating a better life for homosexuals, serving on the Australian National Council on AIDS and other international organizations including the AIDS Society of Asia and the Pacific, of which (as of the 2005 Kobe ICAAP Congress) he is president.[6] In October 2006 he was elected to the board of Oxfam Australia.[7] In 2010 he stepped down from this position.

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 has written in the Mind of America (1986) and Power and Community (1994), regarding the topics of HIV and AIDS.[8]

Altman is a professorial fellow in the Institute for Human Security at La Trobe University. 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.[9]

In June 2008, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia.[10]

At the APCOM HERO Awards 2021, he was awarded the Shivananda Khan Award for Extraordinary Achievement.[11]

Writings and speeches

In 1971, Altman published his first book, Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation[12] – 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"[13] and his posing of the notion of "the end of the homosexual",[14] in which the potential for both heterosexual and homosexual behaviour becomes a widespread cultural and psychological phenomenon. In 2005 he published Gore Vidal's America, a study of US author Gore Vidal's writings on history, politics, sex, and religion (Vidal, 2005).

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.[15][16]

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'.[17]

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.[18]

In his preface to The City and the Pillar,[19] Gore Vidal writes that Altman brought the book back with him but it was seized at Sydney Airport and subsequently declared obscene by a judge who observed that the Australian obscenity law was "absurd", thus leading to it being repealed sometime later.[20]

In March 2013 Altman wrote about the death of his partner of 22 years, Anthony Smith, who died from lung cancer in November 2012.[21]

In 2023, Altman published his first fiction book, a murder mystery.

Publications

  • Homosexual: oppression and liberation. Outerbridge & Dienstfrey. 1971. ISBN 0-87690-039-2.
  • Coming out in the seventies. Sydney: Wild and Woolley. 1979. ISBN 978-0-226-01606-1.
  • Rehearsals for change: politics and culture in Australia. Sydney: Fontana/Collins. 1980.
  • The Homosexualization of America: The Americanization of the Homosexual. New York: St. Martin's Press. 1982.
  • AIDS in the mind of America. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday. 1986.
  • The comfort of men. Port Melbourne, Vic.: W. Heinemann Australia. 1993.
  • Power and community: organizational and cultural responses to AIDS. London; Bristol, PA: Taylor & Francis. 1994.
  • Defying gravity: a political life. St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin. 1997.
  • Global sex. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 2001. ISBN 978-0-226-01606-1.
  • Gore Vidal's America. Cambridge; Malden, MA: Polity. 2005.
  • 51st state?. Carlton North, Vic.: Scribe Short Books. 2006.
  • The End of the Homosexual?. St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press. 2013.
  • Altman, Dennis & Jonathan Symons (2016). Queer Wars: The New Global Polarization over Gay Rights. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
  • Unrequited Love. Clayton, Victoria: Monash University Publishing. 2019. ISBN 9781925835120.
  • God Save The Queen: the strange persistence of monarchies. Brunswick, Victoria: Scribe Publications. 2021. ISBN 9781922310569.
  • Death in the Sauna. Melbourne, Victoria: Clouds of Magellan Press. 2023. ISBN 9780645732801.

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. ↑ 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
  3. ↑ 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)
  4. ↑ "Dennis Altman appointed to Harvard Chair of Australian Studies". La Trobe University. Archived from the original on 26 August 2006. Retrieved 14 March 2006.
  5. ↑ La Trobe University website Staff Profile, Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe University Retrieved 10 August 2013
  6. ↑ "Message from ASAP". Seventh International Congress on AIDS in Asia and the Pacific. Retrieved 30 July 2006.
  7. ↑ "Message from ASAP". Board election results for Oxfam Australia, 2006. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007. Retrieved 5 November 2006.
  8. ↑ Gerstner, David (2006). Queer Culture. Routledge. pp. 1. ISBN 0-415-30651-5.
  9. ↑ "100 Most Influential Australians". The Sydney Morning Herald, June 2006. 27 June 2006.
  10. ↑ "Australian honour awards". Australian Government, June 2008.
  11. ↑ "APCOM 2021 Awards". APCOM, November 2021. 26 November 2021.
  12. ↑ Altman, Dennis (1993). Homosexual : oppression and liberation. New York: New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-0623-1. OCLC 27431520.
  13. ↑ Altman, D. Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation, Sydney, Angus & Robertson (1972), pp. 58–95 (ISBN 0-207-12459-0)
  14. ↑ Altman, D. Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation, Sydney, Angus & Robertson (1972), pp. 216–228
  15. ↑ Altman, Dennis (December 1970). "One Man's Gay Liberation" (PDF). Come Out!. Vol. 1, no. 7. Gay Liberation Front. p. 20. OCLC 14078148.
  16. ↑ Altman, Dennis (1972). "Coming Out In Australia" (PDF). Come Out!. Vol. 2, no. 8. Gay Liberation Front. p. 15. OCLC 14078148.
  17. ↑ The speech, Coming Out in the Seventies, was reproduced at the Forum on sexual liberation by Altman (1979), p. 16
  18. ↑ Altman, Dennis, "Global gaze/global gays", GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies, 1997
  19. ↑ Vidal, Gore (1995). The city and the pillar. New York: Random House. p. 310. ISBN 0-679-43699-5.
  20. ↑ Reuters, "Sydney Judge Terms ‘Brechinridge’ Filthy", New York Times, 17 April 1970
  21. ↑ Altman, Dennis, "Life after Anthony", Sydney Morning Herald, 9 March 2013.
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