UMass Boston

Integrated Sciences Complex at night view from the water.
The Cultural Politics of HIV/AIDS

Course Overview

Date / Time Location Credits Minimium Tuition*
9/3/24 - 12/13/24
TuTh 9:30a.m. – 10:45a.m.
McCormack M02-0404 3 $1984 (guest students)
Date
9/3/24 - 12/13/24
Time
TuTh 9:30a.m. – 10:45a.m.
Location
McCormack M02-0404
Credits
3
Min. Tuition*
$1984 (guest students)

Description

This course uses feminist, queer, and critical race frameworks to interrogate the social, political, and cultural aspects of HIV/AIDS. Not merely a virus, HIV is also a set of cultural meanings tied to gender, race, nation, and the body. By focusing on political activism and cultural production (film, art, etc.) we will employ a critical humanistic approach to the epidemic that goes beyond biomedicine or epidemiology. Because a great deal of the popular and scholarly attention to the AIDS crisis has focused on white, gay, cisgender men, the course examines the politics of HIV/AIDS through an intersectional lens that takes into account how race, gender, class, nationality and so on have shaped the crisis and the experiences of people living with HIV/AIDS. Although we will focus on the cultural politics of HIV/AIDS in the United States from the time the crisis emerged in the early 1980s through today, we will also consider the pandemic in terms of US empire.

Prerequisites

One WGS course or permission of instructor

This course is closed for registration.

Course Details