Literature of AIDS Epidemics

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

What can the literature/art of previous pandemics tell us about how we will write about future pandemics? Will the writing about the AIDS epidemic be able to shed any light on how we will be writing about Covid-19? What are the differences and similarities? In this course, we will look at various works that deal with AIDS. We will read across genres: fiction and nonfiction, memoir and poetry, film and theater. We’ll study Tony Kushner’s play, Angels in America, Thom Gunn’s incredible poems in The Man with Night Sweats, Marlon Riggs’s film Tongues Untied, Susan Sontag’s story The Way We Live Now, among others. Please be prepared to read, to read more, and then read some more. And then watch some movies!