Is activism a form of memorialization? What does the ongoing story of HIV tell us about race, gender, and culture in the USA? Through exploration of architecture, art, dance, film, literature, performance, theory, visual art, and other modes of communication, students will be exposed to historic and contemporary HIV related culture within a US context. Through the work, they will have an opportunity to consider how they know what they know about HIV/AIDS, the role that culture plays within the epidemic, and ideas around how the stories we tell inform the individual and collective action we take / don’t take. The course will include readings of theory that helped shape understandings of the crisis, followed by a survey of collective projects and individual works made in the last 10 years that both illuminate histories of HIV/AIDS while telling us something about the epidemic in the present. Students will have an opportunity to consider HIV through the lens of other contemporary subjects, such Black Lives Matter activism, and the COVID-19 epidemic.