CFP for Culture, Health and Sexuality "Viral Times"
Deadline for abstracts: June 16, 2020

We live in viral times: in just a few months, the COVID-19 pandemic has
caused momentous alterations to our lives, society and culture. These
changes—from the risk of infection to the stark highlighting of the
inequality inherent to neoliberal systems—are of such depth that thinker
Paul B. Preciado asked: “under what conditions and in which way would life
be worth living?”

Some current discussions by queer scholars about the social impacts of
COVID-19 are informed by the cultural inheritance from the HIV and AIDS
crisis that swept the world in 1980s and 1990s (and, both the virus and its
cultural heritage remain endemic to many communities in the globe).
However, at a broader level, many lessons from the AIDS crisis are being
ignored, particularly those that highlight the importance of collective and
community-based responses to the virus. At the same time, many political
leaders have often excluded the humanities and social sciences, forgetting
the essential role these subjects play in theorising through and about the
HIV epidemic, and their key role of thinking about the conditions of the
current situation. Instead, the “expert” advice spoken about by politicians
has almost always only been limited to the medical sciences (which is
usually presented as monolithic and incontrovertible) with little space
provided for expert scholars in other areas to critically engage with the
situation.
This themed symposium in Culture, Health and Sexuality provides a space in
which to ask: how might memory and culture of HIV inform our responses to
COVID-19? In asking this question, we hope to foster critical engagements
with the role of thinking about HIV and AIDS in the current culture of
pandemic that address issues such as:

- What lessons can HIV teach in developing or deploying critical and social
public health?
- What do the cultural responses to the virus look, sound and feel like
across borders, groups and communities? What power dynamics does COVID-19
intersect with?
- What are the material conditions of sexuality and health during an
epidemic?
- How might digital cultures mediate experiences of an epidemic?
- Why and how is HIV an obvious precedent to COVID-19?
- What are the risks and omissions of establishing a connection between HIV
and COVID-19?
- How might COVID-19 inform our memories of HIV?
- What collective responses have we seen to COVID-19 and HIV and AIDS, and
what can we learn by comparing them?
- What does comparing COVID-19 and HIV and AIDS tell us about how lives
matter?

We call for contributions that critically engage with the relationship
between HIV and COVID-19 and which address issues such as (but are not
limited to):

* Experiences of sexuality and intimacy in viral times, as well as the role
of technology in developing intimacy, connection and embodiment
* The material conditions of sex work and sexual health provision during an
epidemic
* The role of sex and sexuality: thinking about hook-ups and casual
sociality during social distancing, the use and production of pornography,
and the experiences of and need for physical and digital sex
* Sexual health, prevention, risk and safer sex in viral times.
* Agency, individuality, and victimhood, as well as notions of intimate and
good/bad citizenship
* Cultural memories and genealogies of COVID-19 and HIV: who remembers and
who gets remembered
* Responses to COVID-19 and HIV, particularly those from public health,
politics and science
* Media narratives of COVID-19, HIV and the AIDS crisis
* Community and relational responses and activism
* How stigma, prejudice and discrimination as well as inequalities have
differentially influenced responses (particularly in times of scarcity and
‘war-time triage’), such as: socioeconomic status, race/ethnicity, age,
nationality, sexuality, or gender

We remain open to other explorations that address the relationship between
HIV and COVID-19 from culture, health and sexuality perspectives.
Contributions are encouraged from a range of perspectives and disciplines,
including but not limited to the social sciences and humanities.
As we write this, we are painfully aware of the challenging emotional and
labour conditions many scholars are currently experiencing, so we encourage
collaborative, reflexive and creative pieces as well as writing that
addresses these issues through autobiography, critical media and cultural
studies, critical theory, queer theory and ethnography or lived experience.
We hope the collection will bridge gaps between disciplines and fields to
become an initial but enduring point of departure for longer-term
conversations about these issues.

Information about the submission process can be found here:
https://think.taylorandfrancis.com/special_issues/viral-times/

Questions may be directed to [log in to unmask] and
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*Jaime Garcia-Iglesias*
The University of Manchester
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