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. In its own way, the conditions of chronic HIV supplanted the mortality narrative that surrounded AIDS in the early-1980s through the mid-1990s. Chronic HIV instantiated a new period of viral 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 HIV transmission rates globally. I am also interested in how post-AIDS discourse affects subject formation and identity consolidation in literature and cultural theory.
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.
