Literary and Visual Representations of HIV/AIDS: Forty Years Later

(Hardback)

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Description

Literary and Visual Representations of HIV/AIDS: Forty Years Later depicts how film and literature about the HIV/AIDS crisis expand upon the issues generated by the epidemic. This collection fills an important gap in the scholarship on HIV/AIDS, by bringing together essays by both established and junior scholars on visual and literary representations of HIV/AIDS. Almost forty years after the first reported cases of what would later be defined as AIDS, this book looks back across the decades at works of literature and film to discuss how the representation of HIV/AIDS has shifted in media. This book argues that literature constitutes a very powerful response to AIDS that ripples into film and politics, driving the changes in past and contemporary representations of HIV/AIDS. The book also expands discussion of the issues generated and amplified by the epidemic to consider how HIV/AIDS has been portrayed in the United States, Western and Southern Africa, Western Europe, and East Asia.

Reviews

Bringing together both literature and the visual arts in the depiction of the HIV/AIDS crisis from a global perspective, Literary and Visual Representations of HIV/AIDS makes a significant contribution to our understanding and witness of this epidemic and how it impacts the lives and institutions of people around the world. The contributions to this collection are nuanced and lasting, making us empathetic to the suffering and calling for us an ethical response to it. -- Lee Trepanier, Saginaw Valley State University

Author Bio

Christine Cynn is associate professor of gender, sexuality, and womens studies at Virginia Commonwealth University. Jennifer Lavoie is instructor of English and American Studies at Central Connecticut State University. Aimee Pozorski is professor of English and director of English graduate studies at Central Connecticut State University.