Course Description
Examines the HIV/AIDS pandemic using an interdisciplinary lens, with a focus on the African context. Through course readings, assignments, and service-learning projects students will evaluate the progress of the epidemic itself and assess global responses to HIV/AIDS from various perspectives, including epidemiology, social history, political economy, and culture.
Athena Title
HIV and AIDS Politics Culture
Non-Traditional Format
The format will include about 70% lectures and discussion and 30% service-learning project. The lectures will provide an overview of selected topics, whereas the small group discussions will allow for in-depth analysis of course readings. The service-learning project will involve collaboration with organizations providing HIV/AIDS care and prevention.
Prerequisite
GLOB 3100 or GLOB 3100E
Pre or Corequisite
GLOB 3150
Semester Course Offered
Offered summer semester every year.
Grading System
A - F (Traditional)
Course Objectives
-- Describe the global burden of HIV and AIDS and how risk of infection and progression to AIDS varies regionally and across various risk groups. -- Identify various modes of transmission of HIV and characterize the pathogenesis and natural history of HIV infection and disease. -- Think critically about the social history of HIV/AIDS—its origins in humans and its spread in human populations, social meanings ascribed to HIV/AIDS, and the history of efforts at prevention, treatment, and control. -- Characterize the role that culture and cultural context play in the transmission of HIV/AIDS, the interpretation of risk factors and risk groups, and the design of prevention and treatment programs. -- Apply epidemiological, cultural, political, and economic theories to understand various policies, approaches, and strategies undertaken to treat HIV and AIDS and to prevent new infections. -- Apply a human rights and social justice approach to understand how poverty, war, conflict, and disaster impact both the transmission of HIV/AIDS as well as treatment and prevention programs in politically unstable environments. -- Collaborate with organizations providing HIV/AIDS care and prevention.
Topical Outline
-- Origins and history of HIV/AIDS; -- Legacies of colonial medicine and their impact on HIV/AIDS in Africa; -- Globalization and the HIV/AIDS pandemic; -- Politics of prevention versus treatment and the current strategy of treatment as prevention; -- Development of treatment and care of HIV using combination antiretroviral therapy; -- Mother-to-child transmission of HIV; -- Social and cultural context of HIV/AIDS transmission, prevention, and treatment; -- HIV prevention: Advances in HIV vaccine development and pre-exposure and post-exposure prophylaxis; -- HIV and the field of Global Health Ethics; -- Global health policy and funding for HIV control: Ending HIV/AIDS?