Call for Papers: A Cartography of HIV and AIDS: Archives, Memories, Representations and Narratives (+info.)

2025-11-17

Coordination  

Antonio A. Caballero Gálvez
Professor in the Department of Communication and Sociology and member of the Diversity Unit at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos. His research focuses on the representation of gender and sexualities in contemporary audiovisual media and social networks. He is a member of the Consolidated Research Group on Sexualities and Gender from an Interdisciplinary Perspective and of the High-Performance Research Group on Media and Political Communication at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos.

Raul Anthony Olmedo Neri
Full-time Professor-Researcher at the Centre for Studies in Communication Sciences in the Faculty of Political and Social Sciences at the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM). His research areas include cultural studies, LGBTIQ+ studies, digital activism, ICTs and everyday life. He is a member of the Mexican Association of Communication Researchers (AMIC) and the Latin American Association of Communication Researchers (ALAIC).

Natalia Cocciarini
Professor at the Faculty of Humanities and Arts of the National University of Rosario. Her research focuses on archives and discourses of sexual countercultures and post-pornography from a socio-historical and cultural perspective. She is co-director of the Master’s Degree in Socio-cultural History and a member of the University Programme on Sexual Diversity at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Studies of the National University of Rosario.

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Studying and researching HIV and AIDS remains an urgent task that challenges us both ethically and affectively. Since its emergence as a pandemic and over the last forty years, HIV and AIDS have had a significant impact on the history of LGBTIQ+ communities globally, leading to the creation of cultural, artistic, political and media discourses that continue to this day. Beyond its biomedical dimension, it is a social and cultural phenomenon that has shaped activism, visual representations, narratives and modes of constructing collective memory. At the same time, it has exposed the operation of mechanisms of unequal vulnerability in terms of gender, class, race and sexuality, generating responses from wider communities regarding the impacts and lived experiences of life with HIV and AIDS.

This special issue invites researchers to contribute theoretical, methodological and/or empirical articles that analyse HIV and AIDS from the perspective of gender and sexuality studies, within an interdisciplinary framework, with particular emphasis on their relationship with communication, culture and the arts, in order to explore the implications, challenges and opportunities that arise in the diverse contexts in which they are situated.

We seek contributions that revisit the legacies of the AIDS crisis and make visible voices, practices and acts of remembrance, in order to attend to their specificities in their temporal contexts, local settings and/or transnational connections, as well as to their potential to (de)nounce the challenges of the present. We are particularly interested in recovering experiences that have been silenced or marginalised throughout history, including those of cis and trans* women, racialised people, communities in the Global South, incarcerated people and sex workers.

Furthermore, this special issue aims to open a space for reflection on how to decolonise historical and contemporary narratives of HIV and AIDS, and to consider affects and forms of collective care as exploratory entry points to archives and processes of memory construction, reconfiguring the ways in which the epidemic is narrated.

We invite contributions that articulate critical analyses oriented towards imagining new ways of building broader communities and strategies of visibility as political response and social justice. Reviews related to the theme of the special issue are also welcome.

Note: In line with the recommendations of the RAE and the WHO, in Spanish usage VIH is written in capital letters as it is an active (non-lexicalised) acronym, whereas sida is a lexicalised acronym and functions as a common noun.

Reviews and texts for the “Panorama” section that engage with the theme of the dossier will also be considered.

 

Focus of the Issue

This special issue addresses representations of HIV and AIDS in the fields of communication, culture and the arts from the standpoint of gender and sexuality studies and within an intersectional perspective, allowing for a critical analysis of how the epidemic has been narrated and figured in media, cultural and artistic discourses. We are interested in examining how these representations —ranging from cinema, literature, photography, dance, theatre and video art to television, the press and social media— shape collective memories and expose the affects and inequalities surrounding experiences of living with HIV and AIDS. Furthermore, the issue explores how these media and cultural dispositifs contribute to re-signifying experiences of HIV and AIDS and to articulating new forms of community and visibility, which is essential for understanding and acting upon the effects of the virus in contemporary society.

 

Descriptors

By way of example, and without being restrictive, submissions may address topics such as:

  • Representations of HIV and AIDS in the cultural and creative industries (film, literature, theatre, sociodigital platforms, etc.).

  • Media, stigma and awareness-raising campaigns.

  • LGBTIQ+ narratives and activism, counter-normative responses and politics of memory.

  • Intersectional analyses of HIV and AIDS (race, class, gender, migration).

  • Individual and/or collective artistic experiences and manifestations around HIV seropositivity.

  • Social and cultural history of HIV and AIDS.

  • Contemporary debates on biomedical technologies and/or uses of PrEP.

  • Memories of HIV and AIDS: testimonies, autobiographies and life stories.

  • Archives, museums and cultural heritage related to AIDS.

  • Religion, morality and discourses on HIV.

  • New generations and critical pedagogies on HIV and AIDS.

International relevance: contributions from different public and private institutions and from diverse international geographical contexts will be especially valued.

Languages: proposals are accepted in Spanish and English.

Editorial guidelines: https://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/ESLG/about

All research articles must adhere to academic standards following the IMRaD format: Introduction, Methods, Results and Discussion + Conclusions. References must follow APA 7, and all articles will be published with their corresponding DOI (where applicable).
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Key dates

Deadline for submission of academic article proposals: 20 March 2026
Deadline for submission of review proposals related to the thematic dossier: 11 May 2026
Publication of the dossier: Second issue, 2026

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List of references

Amaral Sales T. . (2023). Mesclando imagens, criando narrativas outras: educações menores em HIV/aids e(m) filmes. Estudios LGBTIQ+, Comunicación y Cultura, 3(1), 35-46. https://doi.org/10.5209/eslg.88085

Cocciarini, N. (2025). Un archivo sidario. Agencias desde las contraculturas sexuales (Argentina 1985-1994). La Plata: EDULP.

Crimp, D. (2002). Melancholia and moralism: Essays on AIDS and queer politics. MIT Press.

Crimp, D. (Ed.). (1988). AIDS: Cultural analysis/cultural activism. MIT Press

Cvetkovich, A. (2018). Un archivo de sentimientos. Trauma, sexualidad y culturas públicas lesbianas. Barcelona: Bellaterra Edicions.

Dion, K. (2022). Positive Images: Gay Men and HIV/AIDS in the Culture of “Post Crisis”. London / New York: I.B. Tauris.

EQUIPO RE (Aimar Arriola, Nancy Garín, Linda Valdés) (2017). Anarchivo sida. Donostia-San Sebastián: Tabakalera.

García-Ramos, F. J. (2023). I tell you through the songs: Barebacking and PrEP in Chenoa’s Fault (Abril Zamora, 2018). In F. A. Zurian & F.-J. García-Ramos (Eds.), Cultural crossings in contemporary audiovisual media: Aesthetic, literary and musical mediations (pp. 182–209). Fragua.

Hascher, K. et al. (2021). “‘Why aren’t you on PrEP? You’re a gay man’: reification of HIV ‘risk’ influences perception and behaviour of young sexual minority men and medical providers.” Culture, Health & Sexuality, 25(1), pp. 63–77. doi: 10.1080/13691058.2021.2018501.

Mackenzie, S. (2013). Structural Intimacies: Sexual Stories in the Black AIDS Epidemic. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Mérida Jiménez, R. M. (ed.) (2019). De vidas y virus. VIH/sida en las culturas hispánicas. Barcelona: Icaria.

Meruane, L. (2014). Viajes virales. La crisis del contagio global en la escritura del sida. Santiago, Chile: Fondo de Cultura Económica.

Sontag, S. (1990). Illness as metaphor; and, AIDS and its metaphors. Anchor Books.

Subero, G. (2014). Representations of HIV/AIDS in Contemporary Hispano-American and Caribbean Culture. Cuerpos suiSIDAs. London / New York: Routledge.