Gina M. Bright: Plague-Making and the AIDS Epidemic. A Story of Discrimination

Known for more than thirty years now, AIDS has not ceased to affect people in more than medical ways. Owing to its predominant perception as a sexually transmitted disease of pandemic proportions that particularly affects already socially marginalized groups, the syndrome remains to this day a marker of social otherness. Echoing experiences with other major medical scourges in Western history such as bubonic plague, tuberculosis, or cancer, works of literature and the visual and performing arts have actively contributed to the societal discourses about AIDS in the United States and Europe since the early days of the epidemic.