Mapping AIDS: Visual Histories of an Enduring Epidemic (Global Health Histories) - Softcover

Engelmann, Lukas

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1108444059 ISBN 13: 9781108444057

Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2020

Synopsis

In this innovative study, Lukas Engelmann examines visual traditions in modern medical history through debates about the causes, impact and spread of AIDS. Utilising medical AIDS atlases produced between 1986 and 2008 for a global audience, Engelmann argues that these visual textbooks played a significant part in the establishment of AIDS as a medical phenomenon. However, the visualisations risked obscuring the social, cultural and political complexity of AIDS history. Photographs of patients were among the earliest responses to the mysterious syndrome, cropped and framed to deliver a visible characterisation of AIDS to a medical audience. Maps then offered an abstracted image of the regions invaded by the epidemic, while the icon of the virus aspired to capture the essence of AIDS. The epidemic's history is retold through clinical photographs, epidemiological maps and icons of HIV, asking how this devastating epidemic has come to be seen as a controllable chronic condition.

About this title

About the Author

Lukas Engelmann is Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Edinburgh.

Edition details

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1108444059
• ISBN 13: 9781108444057
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 268