WGS 343L - The Cultural Politics of HIV/AIDS

3 Credit(s) | Lecture | Graded (included P/F option)
for credit

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 day, we will also consider the pandemic in terms of US empire.

Course Note
WGS 343L and AMST 343L are the same course.

This course is cross-listed as AMST 343L

Enrollment Requirements:
Prerequisite: One WGS course OR permission of instructor

Semester(s) typically offered: Fall and Spring

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