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What Happens When Literary Critics and Scientists Converse?: Teaching a Course on Representations of HIV/AIDS

This article discusses a collaborative course at Davidson College titled Representations of HIV/AIDS. With students, the authors look at the over thirty-year-old history of HIV/AIDS and the interwoven scientific and artistic responses to it. Not simply analyzing representations of HIV/AIDS from their disciplinary perspectives, however, they each interrogate the other’s knowledge from their own position, both informing and learning as coteachers and fellow students. Their strategies also include organizing the course by issues salient to HIV/AIDS rather than major scientific/historical landmark events as might be traditionally defined; continually interrogating the historiography of HIV/AIDS; emphasizing the diverse identities and lived experiences of HIV/AIDS; exploring how stigma can thwart science and oppress others and how that has been answered by the arts; discussing concepts (such as patient zero) that, while useful for the scientist or artist, can still be problematic; and understanding how economics impacts both the art and science of HIV/AIDS. In the course students take on a prominent role as active critical thinkers, and their critical explorations of HIV/AIDS always occur at the intersection of art and science. This course imparts to students vital lessons in a world where complex global problems will increasingly demand interdisciplinary, collaborative solutions.