As an object, the dental dam awkwardly straddles the history of AIDS activism and queer sexuality, acting as an assertion that sex doesn’t require the presence of a penis to be real sex, while acknowledging simultaneously that such sex still carries risks. The dental dam was deployed as an object for sexual use in an attempt to abate the risk of HIV transmission, but its questionable efficacy as a barrier against the virus has reduced it, for some at least, to a latex relic of historical fears.
James Grannell explores the important role that Gay Health Action played in demystifying information about HIV and AIDS prevention in 1980s Ireland. GHA’s matter-of-fact publications sought to ‘meet people where they were’.
How did an American comic book publisher become a crusader in the fight against HIV/AIDS? Frances Reed unearths the forgotten story of Eclipse Enterprises and its collectable AIDS trading cards, currently on display at the Royal College of Nursing.
In this lecture marking World AIDS Day 2016, Prof. Cook traces the emotional landscape of Britain at a key turning point in the history of AIDS.
This month’s HWO feature reminds us that the history of HIV and AIDS is contentious, and to understand what is happening to the history of HIV now, we need to continue to think about the politics of our contemporary world, who gets to produce representations of the past and whose stories enter our public consciousness.
