Dennis Altman

Dennis Patkin Altman (born 1943) is an Australian academic and gay rights activist.

Early life and education

Dennis Patkin Altman was born in 1943 in Sydney, New South Wales to Jewish immigrant parents, and spent most of his childhood in Hobart, Tasmania.

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

Career

Returning to Australia in 1969, Altman taught politics at the University of Sydney. In 1985, he became a lecturer at La Trobe University, where he later became a professor of politics. He was appointed Visiting Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University in January 2005.

In 2006 Altman was a professorial fellow in the Institute for Human Security at La Trobe University. In 2009 he was appointed director of the Institute for Human Security at La Trobe University.Template:Better source

Other activities

Altman supports organisations dedicated to creating a better life for homosexuals, serving on the Australian National Council on AIDS. He was president of the AIDS Society of Asia and the Pacific as of the 2005 Kobe ICAAP Congress. In October 2006 he was elected to the board of Oxfam Australia. 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 wrote In the Mind of America (1986) and Power and Community (1994), regarding the topics of HIV and AIDS.

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.

Recognition

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

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

Writings and speeches

In 1971, Altman published his first book, Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation – 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" and his posing of the notion of "the end of the homosexual", in which the potential for both heterosexual and homosexual behaviour becomes a widespread cultural and psychological phenomenon.

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.

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".

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.

In his preface to the 1995 republication of his 1946 novel The City and the Pillar, US author Gore Vidal wrote that Altman had taken a copy of the book back with him to Australia around 1970, but it was seized at Sydney Airport. The book was subsequently declared obscene by a judge who observed that the Australian obscenity law was "absurd", thus leading to it being repealed sometime later.Template:Better source In 2005 Altman published Gore Vidal's America, a study of Vidal's writings on history, politics, sex, and religion.

Personal life

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

External links

• The Australian Lesbian and Gay Archives holds a small collection of personal papers donated by Dennis Altman.
• Professor Dennis Altman, La Trobe University staff page
• Institute for Human Security List of opinion pieces by Professor Altman and present appointment at La Trobe
• What Kevin Rudd should tell the Pope Template:Webarchive Opinion piece by Dennis Altman on the La Trobe University website
• The Olympic spirit? It's a simple, shared global experience Template:Webarchive Opinion piece by Dennis Altman on the La Trobe University website
• US Election 2008: Knife-edge race now favours McCain Template:Webarchive Opinion piece by Dennis Altman on the La Trobe University website
• An excerpt from Altman's book Global Sex
• "Life after Anthony", Sydney Morning Herald, 9 March 2013.