Representations of HIV/AIDS

This course is seven weeks long; new weeks will release every Monday at 14:00 UTC (10 am ET in the United States) and remain open until two weeks after the final week is released. We strongly encourage you to remain with the pace of the course. The class is heavily discussion-based, and discussions will be most active around the most current week. Release dates are as follows: Week Two: October 13 Week Three: October 20 Week Four: October 27 Week Five: November 3 Week Six: November 10 Week Seven: November 17 Please also note: starting with week 2, every week will first be led off by a short video Dave and Ann post in response to the discussion forums (particularly those centered around the cultural artifacts) from the previous week.

• How to do a basic analysis of literary and scientific texts.
• How scientists and artists create knowledge, and what they have in common as they do so.
• A general understanding of the scientific and artistic history of HIV/AIDS.
• How language, both scientific and artistic, shapes our ideas about HIV/AIDS.
• How visual representation in the arts and sciences is critical for advancing important ideas about HIV/AIDS.
• How the individual experience of living with HIV/AIDS has changed over the last three decades, and why understanding HIV/AIDS through personal stories is important.
• Current debates and developments in HIV/AIDS.
• How to interpret what we call "cultural artifacts"--i.e., widely-available representations of HIV/AIDS.
• How the arts and sciences can more generally inform each other in responding to global problems like the HIV/AIDS pandemic.