POST-AIDS DISCOURSE & “END OF AIDS” IDEOLOGIES
The post-AIDS era started in the late-1990s in research communities seeking to provide support to those living with HIV/AIDS. New medical technologies (commonly called antiretrovirals or ARVs) 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 “liveable condition” and fewer people progressed to AIDS diagnoses (particularly people living in the US, UK and Australia). In its own way, the conditions of chronic HIV supplanted mortality narrative that surrounded AIDS in the early-1980s and 1990s. The term “post-AIDS” signifies the period in “chronic wellness” means people living with HIV on effective treatment can live “ordinary” and biomedically-monitored lives.
My research in this area concerns post-AIDS discourse in queer communities in the UK and US. I am interested in how activists, artists and public health professionals negotiate the construction of sexual health education, the archiving of HIV histories, and issues of “viral literacy” in queer community education. I am also interested in the discursive implications of post-AIDS rhetoric in response to HIV and community health globally.
Related work has appeared in various publications, including The Queerness, Mainly Male, Instinct Magazine, and Oxford Queer Studies Network. This research is largely undertaken as a doctoral project at the University of Edinburgh and Edinburgh College of Art.
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.
