Faculty

Profile

Theodore (Ted) Kerr is a writer, educator, cultural organizer and artist whose work explores the history and ongoing impact of HIV/AIDS through the lenses of art, activism, and community storytelling.

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 curated the 2021 exhibition AIDS, Posters and Stories of Public Health: A People's Pandemic for the National Libraries of Medicine.

He is a founding member of the international collective What Would an HIV Doula Do?

He was one of 4 oral historians who worked on Visual Arts and the AIDS Epidemic: An Oral History Project for the Smithsonian, Archives for American Art in 2017 / 2018.

Kerr earned his MA from Union Theological Seminary where he researched Christian Ethics and HIV, and his BA from the New School where he was Riggio Writing and Democracy fellow. At his graduation he spoke about the queer everyday in surviving. 

Degrees Held

2016  M.A., Theology, Union Theological Seminary

2014 B.A., The New School for Public Engagement, The New School

Recent Publications

PUBLICATIONS AS AUTHOR    
Books
2022  We Are Having this Conversation Now: The Times of AIDS Cultural Production, with
  Alexandra Juhasz, Duke University Press

Peer-Reviewed Articles
2026 “Gay Uncles,” QED - A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking, Forthcoming

2023 “When We're Coming From: What Would an HIV Doula Do? on Pandemic Time(s),”
Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies - Vol. 44, Issue. 1, (co-author)

2020 “How To Live With…,” QED - A Journal in GLBTQ Worldmaking - Vol. 7, No. 3

2016 “AIDS 1969: HIV, History…,” Drain Journal, AIDS and Memory – Vol. 13:2

2014 “Who is HIV for?” Women’s Studies Quarterly, Solidarity - Vol 42: 3,4

Book Chapters
2026 “Safer History Kits: Day With(out) Art Video Broadsides and the Distribution of the Past,” 
Presence/Absence: 30 Years of Day With(out) Art, Eds: Kyle Croft and Risa Puleo

2024 “Memorialisation within an ongoing crisis: Learning from COVID-19, HIV/AIDS and the
Overdose Response Activists,” The HIV and COVID-19 pandemics: Viral Times, Eds:
Maurice Nagington, Peter Aggleton, Jamie Garcia Iglesias

2021 “The Conversations We Need to Save Each Other's Lives,” with charles ryan long,
Between Certain Death and a Possible Future, Ed: M. Sycamore

2019 “Globalization(s), Roundtable,” AIDS and the Distribution of Crisis, Eds: J.F. Cheng, N.
Shahani

PUBLICATIONS AS EDITOR 
2024 “Community Knowledge Practice,” Visual AIDS Journal

2019  “What You Don’t Know about AIDS Could Fill A Museum,” On Curating, Issue 42

2014 “Time Is Not A Line,” We Who Feel Differently Journal, Issue 3

Research Interests

HIV,AIDS, history, media, health, community, art, justice. 

Awards And Honors

SELECT AWARDS, FELLOWSHIPS, RESIDENCIES, GRANTS
2026      Social Justice Teaching award, The New School
2025       Monette-Horwitz Trust honoree
2025      CNP Media Roundtable Fellow, for What Would an HIV Doula Do?
2025      In Fellowship awardee, from A Blade of Grass, for What Would an HIV Doula Do?
2025       Lang College Civic Liberal Arts Class Grant
2025       Knowledge of AIDS fellowship, University of Washington
2022       Suzanne Fiol Curatorial Fellow, Issue Project Room, New York
2019       CounterPublics, The Luminary, St. Louis
2018       Collaborate Arts Fellowship, Nurture Arts, New York
2018       The Fellowship for the Utopian Practice, Culture Push, New York
2017       Emerging Writer Retreat, Lambda Literary, California
2016       Deutsches Hygiene Museum, Dresden, Germany