Teaching A Women’s History of HIV/AIDS


This section of the website is devoted to models for high school teachers and college instructors to integrate the myriad content presented here into their classrooms. We have used both historical and artistic strategies to engage learners from 9th grade to college. By providing three curricular foci, Method, Theory and Praxis, we encourage educators to use the materials to explore new ways of teaching women’s history, the history of HIV/AIDS, and cultural production practices.

The two comprehensive plans, one art-based, the other primary source-based, can be followed in whole or in part, and we encourage you to read through the curricula to find the combination of activities that meet your community’s needs. The arts-based lesson plan lets students explore the connections between reproductive justice and the history of HIV/AIDS, while producing their own artwork. The primary source-based lesson plan encourages students to engage in historical thinking to map the historical and contemporary experiences of women living with HIV/AIDS.

Download the entire arts-based: Reproductive Justice + HIV/AIDS Lesson Plan
Download the entire primary source-based: Thinking Historically About Women and HIV Lesson Plan


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Methodological/Historiographic Approach



A historiographic approach to teaching I’m Still Surviving: A Living Women’s History of HIV in the United States explores how narratives of the epidemic have evolved over time. At the center of this approach is the gradual shift in public and academic perspectives of women as central, rather than marginal to the history of HIV/AIDS. This approach also contextualizes contemporary women’s experiences living with HIV within this longer history. Educators can use the following lesson(s) when teaching 20th Century Women’s History, U.S History Since 1877, as well as Histories of Public Health. Students will learn and deploy strategies for historical inquiry by analyzing primary source documents, and will contextualize the social, political, and medical experiences of contemporary women’s living with HIV/AIDS.
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Link to book

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Arts-based activities‍

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Activity 1: REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE IS ___?

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Activity 2: REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE & YOU ACTIVITY ZINE

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Primary source-based activities‍

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Activity 1: INTRODUCTION TO WOMEN’S HISTORY AND THE AIDS EPIDEMIC

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Activity 2: HOW DO WE “TALK” ABOUT HIV/AIDS?

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Activity 5: CONSTRUCTING HISTORICAL NARRATIVES

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Link to book


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Theoretical Approach



A theoretical approach to teaching I’m Still Surviving: A Living Women’s History of HIV in the United States makes explicit connections between HIV/AIDS and the reproductive justice movement by identifying and exploring the social, political, cultural, and economic consequences of intersecting systems of oppression that leave minoritized women vulnerable to HIV transmission and prevent them from accessing equitable healthcare services. This approach also explores how women living with HIV as well as activists and scholars have theorized resistance, restorative justice, and how health means more than the absence of disease. Students will formulate arguments about complex historical processes, support claims with evidence, and provide tools for imagining future possibilities for justice and care. They will ask and answer what it means to build and sustain a “healthy community”?
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Arts-based activities‍

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Activity 1: REPRODUCTIVE JUSTICE IS ___?




Primary source-based activities‍

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Activity 4: MAKING HISTORICAL ARGUMENTS





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Praxis Approach



In this praxis-based approach to teaching I’m Still Surviving: A Living Women’s History of HIV in the United States students will conduct and produce their own historical scholarship, engage with art-making as a form of reflection and community-building, and learn about various forms of media. Students will engage critical and creative practices for interpreting and representing historical narratives of the AIDS epidemic as they draw connections between themselves, their own communities, and women living with HIV. Create visual and/or written representations of HIV/AIDS history by exploring the importance of narrative. Imagine the future(s) of reproductive justice. Draw connections between oneself, one’s community, and people of the past. This will help students understand the power they have to enact change.
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Arts-based activities‍

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Activity 3: PRACTICING THE FUTURE WE WANT COLLAGE ACTIVITY




Primary source-based activities‍

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Activity 3: CONDUCTING ORAL HISTORY INTERVIEWS

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Activity 5: CONSTRUCTING HISTORICAL NARRATIVES
History Moves is an initiative exploring the intersection between HIV, women, and public health.

Copyright © History Moves 2020. All Rights Reserved.
History Moves is a community collaborative project that explores how to put the public at the center of public history.
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Copyright © History Moves 2020. All Rights Reserved.