The Melancholia of AIDS: Interview with Douglas Crimp

From 1977 to 1990, Douglas Crimp was an editor of the journal October. In 1987 he edited the October special issue on AIDS, entitled AIDS: Cultural Analysis/Cultural Activism and published as a book in 1988.1 This collection of critical, cultural, and theoretical responses to AIDS was a formative work in AIDS activism and a founding text in queer theory. Crimp is author of AIDS Demo Graphics, On the Museums Ruins, and, most recently, Melancholia and Moralism: Essays on AIDS and Queer Politics.2 Crimp is Fanny Knapp Allen Professor of Art History at the University of Rochester in New York.