We are pleased to announce that Emily Bass has been selected as The New York Public Library’s Martin Duberman Visiting Scholar for 2018–2019. Emily Bass has spent more than twenty years writing about and working on HIV/AIDS in America and East and Southern Africa. Her writing has appeared in Esquire, The Lancet, Ms., n+1, Out, POZ, Slice and many other publications, and has received notable mention in Best American Essays. For the past thirteen years, she has worked at AVAC, a New York-based advocacy group, where, as Director of Strategy and Content, she seeks to build powerful, transnational activist coalitions that use data to guide campaigns for accountability and change. A writer and social justice activist with a strong dedication to queer and women’s health agendas, she has served as an expert advisor to the World Health Organization and is a member of the What Would an HIV Doula Do Collective. The Plague War, her book on America's war on AIDS in Africa is forthcoming from Public Affairs Press in 2020. During her Fellowship, she will explore the history of America-based AIDS activists engagement with AIDS epidemics in Africa and the Caribbean, and with foreign aid as possible remedy. 

The Martin Duberman Visiting Scholar program at The New York Public Library fosters excellence in LGBT studies by providing funds for scholars to do research in the Library’s preeminent LGBT historical collections. The Fellowship is open to both academic faculty and independent scholars who have made a significant contribution to the field. For more information, visit the fellowship page.

The Martin Duberman Visiting Scholars are funded by the generous support of Martin Duberman and Eli Zal.