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177 AN T I OC H CO L L E G E C L A S S O F 19 6 5 5 0 t h A N N I V E R S A R Y B O O K T R E I C H L E R and Paula Treichler with assistance from Ann Russo, published by Routledge/Pandora in 1985—re- viewed by Anthony Burgess on the front page of theTLS.) Nevertheless, despite the problems I had with medical education and medical practice, I was finding medicine as an intellectual field increasingly compelling. It was taking me back to my enthrallment at the Denver Children’s Hospital and giving me ideas for exciting research possi- bilities. As one of my faculty com- rades put it, “medicine is the ulti- mate interdisciplinary study of the human body.” At its best, from my (Antiochian) perspective, medicine also represents a paradigmatic di- alectic between theory and prac- tice (the M.D.-Ph.D. program com- pounds this dynamic). In any case, working in a medi- cal setting significantly reshaped my research direction.When I (at last) became a full-time faculty member on the Urbana-Champaign campus, it was in the intellectually rigor- ous and nondoctrinaire Institute of Communications Research. In addi- tion to teaching doctoral seminars in feminist theory and in cultural stud- ies of science and medicine (a field I helped found) and directing many dissertations that involved health and medicine, I also directed six dis- sertations of M.D.-Ph.D. students. And I was able to take up the explo- ration of the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Beginning in 1985 with Rock Hudson’s announcement that he had AIDS, I spent the next fifteen years studying and writing about the HIV/AIDS epidemic. I had only meant to write one article, “AIDS, Homophobia,and Medical Discourse: An Epidemic of Signification.” But at that early stage the epidemic was all-consuming: it would not let you go. Every day brought new revela- tions, findings, resources, perspec- tives, connections, and outrages (“HOUSEHOLD PESTS SPREAD AIDS”). Because my work helped people outside the biomedical sci- ences understand the complicated and changing science, culture and politics of the epidemic, I ended up publishing in an eclectic mix of books and journals including art, art history, anthropology, African stud- ies, literature, history, law, medicine, and medical humanities. Note that feminist and women’s studies pub- lications do not figure here, for U.S. feminists were shockingly dismis- sive of the epidemic as “a gay man’s disease”caused by“men’s dirty prac- tices”such as“all that sex and thrust- ing thrusting thrusting.” Research presentations across the U.S. and in other countries (U.K., Germany, Brazil, Mexico, Australia and South Africa) greatly expanded my sources of knowledge and cultural perspec- tives. My book on the epidemic, a thoroughly updated and unified re- vision of these essays,was published in 1999 by Duke: How To Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicles of AIDS . My current book project is a cultural history of condoms, con- nected to but quite distinct from the HIV/AIDS epidemic. Just one more chapter in this much-too-long story. In 2001 I was invited to join the board of trustees of Antioch University. At this point I was pretty fed up with Antioch in all its incarnations—cutting it some slack because of boosters like Bill Hooper but never forget- ting my many reasons for alien- ation. Many of you have your sto- ries. Probably most hateful for me was my 1978 encounter with president Bill Birenbaum after my father died. Both my parents are gone now, I said, and this would be a good time to undertake fund- raising for Antioch in their names. Birenbaum, swaying in his black ve- lour jumpsuit and rattling the ice in his glass of bourbon, slurred “Why should I do anything for your par- ents? They’re dead .” But Hooper and BarbaraWinslow persuaded me that it was time to come to the aid of the party—specifically, that a stron- ger voice for the College and for academic values was desperately needed. I was encouraged that Joan Straumanis had been appointed in- terim president of the College. But no matter what the history, inten- tion, and financial purpose of the university structure had been (and everyone’s account was different), it now seemed totally fucked up to the detriment of the College.Yet the adult campuses were not what I ex- pected: they each had their own fo- cus and mission and these appeared to be embodied by the faculty and students—at least those who were primed to speak to us. It was also under the University’s auspices that a delegation from Antioch College and Yellow Springs travelled to Coretta Scott King’s memorial ser- vice and funeral in January 2006. But you all know the story from here on out: the board became in- creasingly corporate, wedded to neoliberal ways of seeing and judg- ing, and hostile to the College. Still it was an utter shock when the Board actually voted in June 2007 to close Antioch College at the end of June 2008. Only four of us voted against the closure. At that point, my past came sweeping back like a monsoon and despite my long- standing issues with the College, when I got home I sat crying in my kitchen and trying to tell my par- ents—wherever they were—what had happened. In her recommen- dation to the board, the chancellor, Toni Murdock, argued that closure would expel the College’s “ghosts” from the campus, making way for a BOLD (and cleansed) RENAISSANCE of the College under her guidance in 2012. But those ghosts were my parents, people I’d grown up with, fellow students, and Horace Mann, for God’s sake! The struggle to save the College was extraordinary. During the year between the closure vote and the university deadline (June 2007 to A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z