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How to Have Theory in an Epidemic: Cultural Chronicles of AIDS

by Paula A. Treichler

Duke University Press, 1999
Cloth: 978-0-8223-2286-3 | eISBN: 978-0-8223-9696-3 | Paper: 978-0-8223-2318-1
Library of Congress Classification RA644.A25T78 1999
Dewey Decimal Classification 362.1969792

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC | REQUEST ACCESSIBLE FILE

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Paula A. Treichler has become a singularly important voice among the significant theorists on the AIDS crisis. Dissecting the cultural politics surrounding representations of HIV and AIDS, her work has altered the field of cultural studies by establishing medicine as a legitimate focus for cultural analysis. How to Have Theory in an Epidemic is a comprehensive collection of Treichler’s related writings, including revised and updated essays from the 1980s and 1990s that present a sustained argument about the AIDS epidemic from a uniquely knowledgeable and interdisciplinary standpoint.
“AIDS is more than an epidemic disease,” Treichler writes, “it is an epidemic of meanings.” Exploring how such meanings originate, proliferate, and take hold, her essays investigate how certain interpretations of the epidemic dominate while others are obscured. They also suggest ways to understand and choose between overlapping or competing discourses. In her coverage of roughly fifteen years of the AIDS epidemic, Treichler addresses a range of key issues, from biomedical discourse and theories of pathogenesis to the mainstream media’s depictions of the crisis in both developed and developing countries. She also examines representations of women and AIDS, treatment issues, and the role of activism in shaping the politics of the epidemic. Linking the AIDS tragedy to a uniquely broad spectrum of contemporary theory and culture, this collection concludes with an essay on the continued importance of theoretical thought for untangling the sociocultural phenomena of AIDS—and for tackling the disease itself.
With an exhaustive bibliography of critical and theoretical writings on HIV and AIDS, this long-awaited volume will be essential to all those invested in studying the course of AIDS, its devastating medical effects, and its massive impact on contemporary culture. It should become a standard text in university courses dealing with AIDS in biomedicine, sociology, anthropology, gay and lesbian studies, women’s studies, and cultural and media studies.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Paula A. Treichler is a professor at the University of Illinois, where she holds positions in the College of Medicine, the Institute of Communications Research, and the Women’s Studies Program. Her writings on AIDS have appeared in such journals as Science, ArtForum, October, Transition, and Camera Obscura. She is the coauthor of Language, Gender, and Professional Writing and A Feminist Dictionary and the coeditor of For Alma Mater,Cultural Studies , and The Visible Woman.

REVIEWS

“Looking backward and ahead, How to Have Theory in an Epidemic is nothing short of a handbook of the meanings of AIDS: as human experience, as political reality, as public service action, and, not least of all, as moral engagement with one of the great challenges to meaning-making and unmaking in everyday life.”—Dr. Arthur Kleinman, Harvard University

“Paula Treichler’s essays are certainly among the most significant written on the subject of AIDS. They are, in fact, a model of what the field of cultural studies at its best can contribute to our thinking about urgent social and political issues. This is an essential book, one that will strongly affect the way people approach the subject of AIDS in the future.”—Douglas Crimp, author of AIDS: Demo Graphics

“How to Have Theory in an Epidemic is a history of histories. . . . Treichler’s accomplishment is without question extremely important and useful. The book and voluminous endnotes cache a vast amount of information and documentation, while the bibliography is a boon to anyone doing serious interdisciplinary work on AIDS. [This] is a major work that scholars and students are likely to consult for many years to come.”

-- Patrice Clark Koelsch Women's Review of Books

“How to Have Theory in an Epidemic is one of the most thorough explorations of AIDS and its representations to be published in the last few years.”

-- Christopher Voigt A&U Magazine

“[How to Have Theory in an Epidemic’s] significance lies in the cultural lessons that we can learn from this epidemic and increased sensititivity to cultural issues that are ‘far more pervasive and central than we are accustomed to believing.’. . . To the extent that this author demonstrates that medicine is a legitimate and practical topic in cultural studies, the influence of this work will be long-standing.”

-- Lisa K. Waldner JAMA

“An important new contribution to this young field. . . . Even though it is not a work of historical scholarship, How to Have Theory in an Epidemic provides much of the insight into events that we might otherwise look for in cultural histories of the HIV epidemic published years from now. The author’s scholarship spans the media, from high art to comic strips. . . . This book is an important addition to the growing literature analyzing illness—and the HIV epidemic—from social and cultural perspectives, and it will be appreciated by many.”

-- Allen L. Gifford New England Journal of Medicine

“This book is a welcome addition to any syllabus related to medicine; science; the sociology of knowledge; the media; social movements; and gender, race, class, and ethnicity. While each chapter is coherent and could stand alone, readers best experience the magnitude and power through reading the entire contents. Indeed, sociologists, anthropologists, historians, and literary and media critics, as well as epidemiologists and clinicians are fortunate to have such a blessing as Treichler’s extensive research and interpretation of AIDS/HIV.”

-- Lisa Jean Moore American Journal of Sociology

"How to Have Theory in an Epidemic makes available in one volume many of [Treichler’s] important essays from the last fifteen years and is invaluable for understanding the collision of discourse. . . . [It] provide[s] crucial insights into what happens when medical discourses on AIDS come into contact with other institutional discourses and other local meanings. . . . Challenging and necessary."

-- Cris Mayo GLQ

"Treichler’s study covers an enormous amount of material. . . . How to Have Theory in an Epidemic makes it plain that the ‘cultural evolution’ of AIDS has not yet managed to move beyond a depressingly familiar terrain of racism, sexism, classism, homophobia, and colonialism."

-- Sheila McManus Signs

TABLE OF CONTENTS

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