Ash John discusses tensions between representing sexual desire and the moral histories of HIV/AIDS in contemporary AIDS theatre. What we think of now as the AIDS Crisis has become both a cultural and historical
Meet this year’s Editor-in-Chief and our three new Associate Editors!
Benjamin Weil explores the history of blood donor activism in the UK.
Is it possible to address the AIDS pandemic without recourse to metaphor? Yes, argues Mícheál McCann, citing the ‘admirable ordinariness’ of Marie Howe’s 1997 collections of poems ‘What the Living Do’.
What is the role of humour in a genre shaped by loss and mourning? Anna Ferrari explores John Weir’s semi-autobiographical 2006 novel, ‘What I did Wrong’.
In the age of PrEP and U=U, why does queer young adult fiction remain nostalgic for early AIDS narratives? asks Gabriel Duckels, Harding Distinguished Postgraduate Scholar at the Centre for Research in Children’s Literature at the University of Cambridge.
Siân Cook, a Graphic Designer and Senior Lecturer at the London College of Communication (UAL), has been involved with HIV/AIDS organisations and activism for over 25 years. She runs the resource www.hivgraphiccommunication.com, a historic visual archive of promotional campaigns and graphic ephemera.
Guest editors José Saleiro Gomes, Louisa Hann, and Stian Kristensen, convenors of the Manchester HIV Humanities: HIV/AIDS Research Group, introduce a week-long HIV Humanities takeover of The Polyphony.
Graphic medicine provides insight into the complex issues around health, society and relationships. The ‘Haunting Our Bodies’ workshop as part of the Being Human Festival, led by Chase Ledin and Garry MacLaughlin, allowed participants to explore this and have a go at creating their own artwork.
Guest author Chase Ledin explores how comic books become a significant platform for HIV/AIDS narratives with the example of Charles Burn’s Black Hole (2005) series. Black nights. Bone-like branches. The stars open from a
