The Global AIDS Pandemic: A History of Action and Activism

Catalog description

The Global AIDS Pandemic: A History of Action and Activism explores the AIDS pandemic from a range of perspectives including public health and science, health care, and social and cultural life in a variety of local, national, international, and institutional contexts. Students will learn about the AIDS pandemic through the form of a historical narrative, examining primary and secondary sources from the 1980s onwards. Students engage with grassroots and activist responses to the AIDS pandemic from the role that the Gay Men’s Health Crisis (GMHC) played in drawing attention to the pandemic in the United States, to the work of the Treatment Action Campaign (TAC) in securing access to antiretroviral mediations in South Africa as well as in the Prevention of Mother-to-Child Transmission of HIV and AIDS. We will follow a timeline from the first reported cases of AIDS to the present day and will examine how the challenges associated with HIV and AIDS have evolved. The class looks at the responses of different governments and how the pandemic has affected social and cultural life in the United States, South Africa, Rwanda, Haiti, and Thailand. The course also examines the interaction between governments, activist organizations, pharmaceutical companies, and international organizations.