POST-AIDS DISCOURSE & “END OF AIDS” IDEOLOGIES

The post-AIDS era started in the late-1990s in response to new protease inhibitor technologies, which suppressed the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) and regulated the symptoms of Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome (AIDS). The term “post-AIDS”  emerged as a shift in cultural discourse as HIV became a “livable condition” and fewer people progressed to AIDS diagnoses. In effect, chronic HIV supplanted the mortality narrative endemic to AIDS discourses of the early-1980s through the mid-1990s and instantiated a new era of chronic well-being.

My research in this area concerns post-AIDS discourse in queer communities in the UK and US, particularly as it manifests in the construction of sexual health education, the archiving of HIV histories, and issues of “viral literacy” in queer community education. I am especially interested in the discursive implications of post-AIDS rhetoric in response to increasing HIV transmission rates globally. I am also interested in how post-AIDS discourse affects subject formation and identity consolidation in literature and cultural theory.

This research is undertaken as a doctoral dissertation at the University of Edinburgh.

GENDER-INCLUSIVE HOUSING

Gender-inclusive housing (GIH) serves as an alternative space for transgender, transitioning, and gender-queer students. Its primary goal is to de-normalize the gender dichotomy by maintaining gender as a socially-constructed reality, though each university interprets the need of gender and sexual(ity) representation differently. Please visit the following links to learn more about gender-inclusive research at US institutions of higher education.

Bibliography | GIH101 | GIH201 | History of GIH at Ohio State | Example Proposal | Trans Allyship Recommendations | Trans Visibility & Future Practice

This research on gender-inclusive housing in the United States was undertaken as a political project to bring GIH to The Ohio State University.