Dying, fighting, and loving in New York—the epicenter of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States, and earlier a central site of crisis and resistance during the AIDS epidemic. Taking K.M. Soehnlein’s fictionalized memoir of the ACT UP movement, Army of Lovers (2022), as a starting point, students of digital storytelling in the CUNY Graduate Center’s Digital Humanities program used a range of techniques and technologies to tell their own stories of sickness and survival in the city.

We present and explore these stories, and the questions they prompt: How did our experiences in recent years invoke the hopes and losses of the past? How does the past speak to us through story, and how does story connect us in the present? What was the city to us in this moment, and how to make the city a monument to our losses and loves for the future? When we are distant, how can digital storytelling help connect us in love?

Learn more about our projects and read and listen to our interview with K.M. Soehnlein.