HIV/AIDS in Memory, Culture and Society

This volume examines the role of culture in developing social, cultural and political discourses of HIV/AIDS from a contemporary viewpoint. In doing so, the memory of HIV/AIDS is a powerful tool to examine representations of the past and connect them with future debates. This reassessment of HIV/AIDS explores the most appropriate way to come to terms with a past that involved a negative, stigmatised and marginalised representation. Therefore, remembering plays a key role in generating collective memory, which allows for the exchange of mnemonic content between individual minds, creates discourses on memory and commemoration, and disseminates versions of the past that may affect the representation of HIV/AIDS in the future. Indeed, rewriting about the past also means assessing our responsibility towards the present and the potential of transmission to future generations, especially in times of pandemics.

1. Viral Echoes: Revisiting the Cultural Memory of HIV/AIDS - Alicia Castillo Villanueva & Angelos Bollas.- 2. Beyond the Spectacle: Rethinking Media Representations of HIV/AIDS and Social Suffering - Angelos Bollas.- 3. #BeMoreJill and the Limited Visibility of Female Carers in It’s a Sin - Janey Umback.- 4. Incorrigibility and Becoming-Child: Portrayals of People Living with HIV/AIDS in the Works of Cuban Writer Miguel Angel Fraga - Mirta Suquet.- 5. Remembering ‘Risky’ Sex: Viral Hauntology and Post-Crisis Cruising Discourses - David O'Mullane.- 6. Embodied Topologies: Space and the Place of Memory among Women Living with HIV in South Africa - Elizabeth Mills.- 7. Mothering with HIV - Denise Proudfoot & Ellie Marley.

Dr Alicia Castillo Villanueva is an Assistant Professor in Hispanic Studies, Gender and Sexuality at the School of Applied Language and Intercultural Studies (SALIS) in Dublin City University. She lectures and researches on the field of Feminist studies with a focus on the social and cultural representations of different forms of gender-based violence, conflict, and memory. She is the co-author of New Approaches to Translation, Conflict and Memory (Palgrave).

Dr Angelos Bollas is an Assistant Lecturer in the School of Sociology at Maynooth University. His research focuses on societal discrimination in relation to sexuality, cultural representations of masculinities, expressions of masculinities that challenge normative understandings of gender and sexuality, as well as pedagogical considerations around inclusion and diversity. He is the author of Contemporary Irish Masculinities and Sexualised Governmentalities (Springer).