After taking this course, students will understand that there is no single narrative of HIV/AIDS in Africa, but rather an enormous range of individual and community experiences. They will become acquainted with the wide variety of aesthetic practices that African writers and filmmakers have used to represent the virus and its social effects. Students will be able to connect these works with broader trends in African literary and film history. They will be able to talk about individual works in relation to the specific national government responses to HIV/AIDS on the continent, which will, in turn, provide the basis for their comparisons of texts from different African countries. Through oral and written assignments, students will develop their analytical and critical thinking skills.

Despite massive advances in testing, prevention, and treatment of HIV infection in recent decades, sub-Saharan Africa remains disproportionately affected, with an estimated 25.7 million people currently living with the virus (according to the World Health Organization in 2018). The scale and longevity of the epidemic in Africa mean that HIV is a part of everyday life for many and has provoked an enormous range of cultural responses from writers and artists. This course considers the diverse ways in which African writers and filmmakers have narrated HIV/AIDS. We will focus on how literary and film narratives represent the experiences of those who carry the virus, the deep complexities of negotiating treatment with antiretroviral therapy, and the multi-layered connections between HIV/AIDS and constructions of race, gender, and sexuality. We will consider how texts engage with the initial reactions—both governmental and popular—to the virus in the 1980s and 1990s, and the ways in which they depict changes in attitudes over the following decades. Students will be encouraged to adopt an analytical and interdisciplinary reading approach that is informed by public health and sociological studies of specific African contexts. At the same time, they will engage with the creative and aesthetic properties of individual works, comparing representations of HIV/AIDS from different African countries. The specific works studied will vary depending according to the instructor, but may include:
	
Violet Kala, Waste Not Your Tears (1994)
Phaswane Mpe, Welcome to Our Hillbrow (2001)
Sindiwe Magona, Beauty’s Gift (2008)
Jonny Steinberg, Sizwe’s Test (2008)
Lizzy Attree, Blood on the Page: Interviews with African Authors Writing about HIV/AIDS (2010)
Kgebetli Moele, The Book of the Dead (2010)
Nobantu Rasebotsa et al., Nobody Ever Said AIDS: Poems and Stories from Southern Africa (2010)
Hilda Twongyeirwe, I Dare to Say: African Women Share Their Stories of Hope and Survival (2012)
Uzodinma Iweala, Our Kind of People (2013)
Charles Mungoshi, Branching Streams Flow in the Dark (2013)
Masande Ntshanga, The Reactive (2014)
Chuma Nwokolo, The Extinction of the Menai (2018)
Elaine Epstein (dir.), State of Denial (2003)
Darrell Roodt (dir.), Yesterday (2004)