History
The Before HIV Project
Using historical research to better understand gay men’s experiences of sexual health and disease
For decades, long before the devastating appearance of HIV/AIDS, men who had sex with men endured a disproportionate burden of sexually transmitted infections. To date, however, very little has been written about these pre-AIDS challenges, not least about how they represented a strikingly new distribution of illness in the mid-20th century. Uncovering this history helps bring light to queer communities’ political struggles for health, education, solidarity, and sexual expression, both in the past and in the present day.
What lies behind our desire to trace the source of disease outbreaks and identify a “patient zero”?
My award-winning book from the University of Chicago Press reveals how one gay man became widely scapegoated for causing a continent’s AIDS epidemic, and presents a deeply contextualized account of the challenges he faced as the first ever “patient zero.” It also demonstrates how similar patterns of blame have repeated themselves throughout history as societies in Europe and North America have struggled to respond to deadly disease outbreaks.
Named a CHOICE Review Outstanding Academic Title, 2018
Winner of the American Historical Association’s 2020 John E. O’Connor Documentary Film Award
Watch this powerful documentary feature film, based on my book, about the North American AIDS epidemic and the man accused of starting it all.
History in action
Watch my keynote address introducing Killing Patient Zero at Vancouver’s KDocs Film Festival in February 2020.