Dennis Altman

Dennis Altman
AM
Born
Dennis Patkin Altman

1943 (age 82–83)
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Alma materCornell University
OccupationsAcademic, activist

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

Early life and education

Dennis Patkin Altman[1] was born in 1943[2] in Sydney, New South Wales, to Jewish immigrant parents, and spent most of his childhood in Hobart, Tasmania.[3]

In 1964 he won a Fulbright scholarship to Cornell University, where he began working with American gay activists.[4]

Career

Returning to Australia in 1969, Altman taught politics at the University of Sydney.

In 1971, Altman published his first book, Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation[5] – considered an important intellectual contribution to the gay liberation movements in the English-speaking world. Among his ideas were "the polymorphous whole"[6] as well as "the end of the homosexual", in which the potential for both heterosexual and homosexual behaviour becomes a widespread cultural and psychological phenomenon.[7]

Altman was 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.[8][9]

One of Altman's most notable speeches was delivered during the first Gay Liberation Group meeting at the University of Sydney on 19 January 1972. It was reprinted as the chapter "Forum on Sexual Liberation" in his book Coming out in the Seventies.[10]

In 1985, he became a lecturer at La Trobe University, where he later became a professor of politics. He wrote In the Mind of America (1986) and Power and Community (1994), both about HIV/AIDS.[11]

In 1997 Altman wrote the 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.[12]

In his preface to the 1995 republication of his 1946 novel The City and the Pillar, 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.[13] 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declared obscene by a judge who observed that the Australian obscenity law was "absurd", thus leading to it being repealed sometime later.[14] In 2005 Altman published Gore Vidal's America, a study of Vidal's writings on history, politics, sex, and religion.[15]

Altman was appointed Visiting Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University in January 2005.[16] In 2006 he was a professorial fellow in the Institute for Human Security at La Trobe University.[17] In 2009 he was appointed director of the Institute for Human Security at La Trobe University.[18]

Altman was president of the AIDS Society of Asia and the Pacific from 2001-2005.[19][20] He was a member of the Governing Council of the International AIDS Society from 2004-2012.[20] In October 2006 he was elected to the board of Oxfam Australia.[21] In 2010 he stepped down from this position.

Altman is a longtime patron of the Australian Queer Archives.[22]

Recognition

In July 2006, he was listed by The Bulletin as one of the 100 most influential Australians ever.[17]

In June 2008, he was appointed a Member of the Order of Australia.[23]

At the APCOM HERO Awards 2021, he was awarded the Shivananda Khan Award for Extraordinary Achievement.[24]

Personal life

Altman's partner of 22 years, Anthony Smith, died from lung cancer in November 2012.[25]

Publications

  • Homosexual: oppression and liberation. Outerbridge & Dienstfrey. 1971. ISBN 0-87690-039-2.
  • Coming out in the seventies. Sydney: Wild and Woolley. 1979. ISBN 978-0-226-01606-1.
  • Rehearsals for change: politics and culture in Australia. Sydney: Fontana/Collins. 1980.
  • The Homosexualization of America: The Americanization of the Homosexual. New York: St. Martin's Press. 1982.
  • AIDS in the mind of America. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday. 1986.
  • The comfort of men. Port Melbourne, Vic.: W. Heinemann Australia. 1993.
  • Power and community: organizational and cultural responses to AIDS. London; Bristol, PA: Taylor & Francis. 1994.
  • Defying gravity: a political life. St Leonards, NSW: Allen & Unwin. 1997.
  • Global sex. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 2001. ISBN 978-0-226-01606-1.
  • Gore Vidal's America. Cambridge; Malden, MA: Polity. 2005.
  • 51st state?. Carlton North, Vic.: Scribe Short Books. 2006.
  • The End of the Homosexual?. St Lucia, Qld: University of Queensland Press. 2013.
  • Altman, Dennis & Jonathan Symons (2016). Queer Wars: The New Global Polarization over Gay Rights. Cambridge, UK: Polity.
  • Unrequited Love. Clayton, Victoria: Monash University Publishing. 2019. ISBN 9781925835120.
  • God Save The Queen: the strange persistence of monarchies. Brunswick, Victoria: Scribe Publications. 2021. ISBN 9781922310569.
  • Death in the Sauna. Melbourne, Victoria: Clouds of Magellan Press. 2023. ISBN 9780645732801.
  • Righting My World - Essays from the Past Half-Century. Melbourne, Victoria: Monash University Publishing. 2025. ISBN 9781923192515.

References

  1. ^ "Prof. Dennis Patkin ALTMAN". Who's Who Australia. Mediality. 2022.
  2. ^ Hurley, Michael (2006). "Dennis Altman". In Gerstner, David A. (ed.). Routledge International Encyclopedia of Queer Culture (1st ed.). Routledge. p. 38. ISBN 9780415306515. Retrieved 17 July 2022.
  3. ^ Slattery, Luke (8–9 February 1997). "Dennis Altman, dynamo in the creation of gay power in Australia, explains why he had to write his biography now". The Australian Magazine.
  4. ^ Piccini, Jon; Smith, Evan; Worley, Matthew, eds. (2018). The far left in Australia since 1945. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-429-48734-7. OCLC 1044734303.
  5. ^ Altman, Dennis (1993). Homosexual : oppression and liberation. New York University Press. ISBN 0-8147-0623-1. OCLC 27431520.
  6. ^ Altman, Dennis (1993). Homosexual : oppression and liberation. New York University Press. pp. 58–95. ISBN 0-8147-0623-1. OCLC 27431520.
  7. ^ Altman, Dennis (1993). Homosexual : oppression and liberation. New York University Press. pp. 216–228. ISBN 0-8147-0623-1. OCLC 27431520.
  8. ^ Altman, Dennis (December 1970). "One Man's Gay Liberation" (PDF). Come Out!. Vol. 1, no. 7. Gay Liberation Front. p. 20. OCLC 14078148.
  9. ^ Altman, Dennis (1972). "Coming Out In Australia" (PDF). Come Out!. Vol. 2, no. 8. Gay Liberation Front. p. 15. OCLC 14078148.
  10. ^ Altman, Dennis (1981). Coming out in the seventies : selections from the first edition. Boston: Alyson Publications. pp. 16–20. ISBN 978-0-932870-05-6.
  11. ^ Gerstner, David (2006). Queer Culture. Routledge. p. 1. ISBN 0-415-30651-5.
  12. ^ Altman, Dennis (1 May 1997). "Global Gaze/Global Gays". GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies. 3 (4): 417–436. doi:10.1215/10642684-3-4-417. ISSN 1064-2684.
  13. ^ Vidal, Gore (1995). The city and the pillar. New York: Random House. p. 310. ISBN 0-679-43699-5.
  14. ^ "Sydney Judge Terms 'Brechinridge' Filthy". The New York Times. 17 April 1970. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 3 March 2026.
  15. ^ Polchin, James (November–December 2006). "America's Gore Vidal". The Gay & Lesbian Review. Retrieved 3 March 2026.
  16. ^ "Dennis Altman appointed to Harvard Chair of Australian Studies". La Trobe University. 10 February 2004. Archived from the original on 26 August 2006.
  17. ^ a b "100 Most Influential Australians". The Sydney Morning Herald, June 2006. 27 June 2006.
  18. ^ "Papers of Dennis Altman, 1961-2025 [manuscript]". National Library of Australia.
  19. ^ Bennett, Freya (1 December 2025). "Dennis Altman AO Reflects on 50 Years of Queer Activism". Ramona Magazine. Retrieved 3 March 2026.
  20. ^ a b "Dennis Altman". The Conversation. 13 March 2012. Retrieved 3 March 2026.
  21. ^ "Result of Oxfam Australia National Board Elections 2006-10 Counted by PRSA". Oxfam Australia. Archived from the original on 27 September 2007.
  22. ^ "Dennis Altman". Monash University Publishing. Retrieved 3 March 2026.
  23. ^ "Professor Dennis Patkin ALTMAN". Australian Honours Search Facility. Australian Government.
  24. ^ "APCOM 2021 Awards". APCOM. 29 November 2021.
  25. ^ Altman, Dennis (8 March 2013). "Life after Anthony". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 3 March 2026.

Further reading

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