“We won’t die secret deaths anymore”: Education, Memory, and Screen Media in Public Understanding of the American AIDS Crisis, 1981-2000

1 online resource (62 pages) : PDF

2022

University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Despite the obvious devastation of the American AIDS crisis—the period of time from 1981 to 2000 when the United States experienced social, cultural, and political repercussions directly related to the presence of AIDS—educated collective memory of this historic event appears to be lacking. Rather than continuing to explore the rise of AIDS-related gay activism and the Reagan administration’s role in so many unacknowledged deaths, historians need to start asking new questions to uncover why the general public lacks this knowledge. First, how have Americans who consciously lived through the AIDS crisis remembered this historical event? This is not a question of what they have remembered but of how the memories have survived. Second, how have Americans who did not consciously live through the AIDS crisis learn about this historical event? Those born during or after the specified timeframe do not possess detailed memories of this event, but their knowledge of it still informs the nation’s collective memory. So, from where is this knowledge coming? Thanks to a politically motivated distribution of popular textbooks and widespread anti-LGBTQ curriculum laws throughout the country, the American public education system fails to adequately address this historic event in classrooms. Instead, the public turns to its most fruitful memory-making vehicle to learn about the American AIDS crisis: the screen. Popular film and television media has taught the history of this event to the American public over the past 30+ years.

masters theses

History

America

M.A.

Aids
American Aids Crisis
Lgbtq History
Popular Media
Public Memory
Screen Media

History

Thorsheim, Peter

Shull, Kristina
Wilson, Mark

Thesis (M.A.)--University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 2022.

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http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.13093/etd:2726