HIV and Palestine, two crises, connected. Participants joined members of What Would an HIV Doula Do? for an evening of presentations, performances, and small group discussions. Through the lens of public health, activism, cultural production and more, we explored the influence, impact and relationship between the HIV response and the fight for Palestinian futures. 

Please note: Masks were required for the entire duration of this event, and masks will be available to all guests at CTHQ. If you are feeling sick or have tested positive for Covid-19, we ask that you please refrain from participating in CTHQ programs in order to care for fellow community members.

What Would an HIV Doula Do? (WWHIVDD) is a community of people joined in response to the ongoing AIDS crisis. We understand a doula as someone who holds space during times of transition. We understand HIV as a series of transitions that begin long before being tested, that continue after treatment and beyond. We know that since no one gets HIV alone, no one should have to live with HIV alone. We doula ourselves, each other, institutions and culture. Foundational to our process is asking questions. www.hivdoula.work

Salonee Bhaman is an interdisciplinary scholar, researcher, and teacher who lives in Brooklyn. Her work explores the linked histories of social provision, HIV/AIDS activism, and the politics of care, migration, and disability. She is a leader of the Asian American Feminist Collective and public historian of queer history through the Close Friends Collective. You can get in touch at www.saloneebhaman.com

Noah Crandell is a Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary theater maker and performer from Minneapolis. His work explores the body’s relationship with time and violence. Noah likes exploring memories, lies, repetition, sound, images, and wigs. His solo show memory boys premiered at Dixon Place in 2017. He was accepted into the International Director’s Symposium with La MaMa in Spoleto, Italy in 2018, working alongside The Talking Band and Stefanie Batten Bland. On screen, Noah has performed in the short film Toe Tag with David Pittu as well as episodes of Law & Order and Poker Face. Noah’s most recent work, My Name Is Jennifer, an 18-hour endurance theater-installation, premiered February 2023 at TheaterLab. Noah holds a BFA in Acting from the University of North Carolina School of the Arts. He is a current student in the Performance & Interactive Media Arts MFA program at Brooklyn College. @noahcrandell

Cea (Constantine Jones) is an interdisciplinary Greek-American thingmaker raised in Tennessee and housed in Brooklyn. They are the author of a novel, IN STILL ROOMS (Operating System 2020) and a collaborative chapbook with Portuguese visual artist Vicente Sampaio, BALEEN: A POEM IN TWELVE DAYS (Ursus Americanus 2022). They live at the corner of stories and noise. @storiesandnoise (IG/Twitter), storiesandnoise.com

Theodore (ted) Kerr is a Brooklyn based writer and organizer. He is the co-author of We Are Having This Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production (Duke University Press, 2022), with Alexandra Juhasz. He is a founding member of WWHIVDD. www.tedkerr.club

Mathew Rodriguez is a Brooklyn-based award-winning Latinx writer, editor and essayist whose memoir, Tough Guy, about his life with his HIV-positive father, is forthcoming from Abrams Books. He is also the author of a forthcoming graphic novel and has been published by The Nation, The Village Voice, POZ, The Body and more. Follow him on Twitter (not X) at @mathewrodriguez.

Izat El Amoor is an assistant professor of Sociology at Hendrix College, Arkansas. Prior, he received his PhD in the Sociology of Education in the Applied Statistics, Social Science, and Humanities Department at New York University. He specializes in LGBTQ issues in Palestine with a focus on education, family life, and the Palestinian Queer Movement. He also studies LGBTQ life in the Middle East and North Africa with a focus on political and cultural factors of LGBTQ change since the Arab uprisings erupted in 2011. @izzatela

Dan Schapiro is an HIV+ Ashkenazi writer, artist and access doula who theorizes through and about Madness, virality, and pop music. He has given talks and readings on poetics, disability, and the arts at the Whitney Museum, Flow Chart Foundation, ONE Archives Foundation, and elsewhere. He is the author of HOLEPLAY (Nueoi, 2020). @waterkeeps