Organizer: University of Konstanz, Zukunftskolleg | Y326
in cooperation with: Leibniz-Zentrum für Zeithistorische Forschung Potsdam (ZZF), University of St. Gallen, Universität Regensburg, Fritz Thyssen Stiftung für Wissenschaftsförderung
About the Conference
Since its emergence in the late twentieth century, the HIV/AIDS virus has caused one of the longest-lasting and deadliest pandemics in human history. This pandemic has had vastly different fates across the world, shaping the image of whole continents (Africa), animating identitarian movements (gay and lesbian movements in the US, the UK, and Western Europe), or facing silence in the public discourse (socialist and post-socialist countries in Eastern Europe and Central Asia).
While primarily situated in the domain of medical science, in Western countries, this pandemic has drawn close attention of researchers focused on the cultural, historical, and anthropological analyses of the phenomenon of HIV/AIDS. They emphasize that the virus has played a central role in challenging not only the healthcare system but also academia, especially the humanities.
The conference aims to foster this theoretical work in the humanities and social sciences in relation to the HIV/AIDS pandemic towards Eastern Europe and Central Asia. This region has infamously been a hotspot of the pandemic in Eurasia, with the situation worsening steadily. UNAIDS reports foreground ideological rather than medical reasons behind the growing number of HIV-positive people in Eastern Europe. Since the very arrival of the virus in the region during the socialist era, local governments and religious authorities have played a crucial role in silencing the HIV/AIDS-related discourse, obscuring the situation from the public, or weaponized it.
The conference brings together scholars from a range of disciplines to explore cultural, social, and biopolitical aspects of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Together, we will examine questions such as: What do we know about HIV/AIDS outside the Western world – in Eastern Europe and Central Asia? What happens when we look at the history, culture, and politics of these regions through their relation to the HIV/AIDS? How have these regions imagined HIV/AIDS, and how have they, in turn, been imagined by others through the virus? What was the role of socialism and the post-socialist condition in the development of the pandemic in our region? What do transnational and transregional solidarities in treating the virus and/or silencing it tell us about global flows of power, ideology, and capital? What stigmas has the pandemic fostered? What are the affective histories of this virus? How does the HIV/AIDS lens contribute to our understanding of histories of violence and vulnerability in Eastern Europe and Central Asia? And how can it shape the advancement of critical theory in our Area Studies?
Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz / hybrid
Room Y 319
Universitätsstrasse 10
78464 Konstanz - Germany
Self-paid guests are welcome, please contact:
tatiana [dot] klepikova [at] ur [dot] de to be included on the reservation.
Zukunftskolleg, University of Konstanz
E-mail: Zukunftskolleg [at] uni-konstanz [dot] de (zukunftskolleg[at]uni-konstanz[dot]de)
Phone: +49 (0)7531 / 88 - 4897