Stonewall50, Thinking Out Loud: Emily Bass: Scenes from The Plague War—the Martin Duberman Fellowship Lecture
2018–2019 Martin Duberman Fellow, Emily Bass, previews her forthcoming book, The Plague War—the first history of America's war on AIDS in Africa.
Since 2003, America’s war on AIDS in Africa has been fought and financed primarily through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, which was launched by George W. Bush in the same State of the Union address in which he declared war on Iraq. PEPFAR has been been reauthorized three times, under both the Obama and Trump Administrations, and has sustained bipartisan support across eight Congresses. It is also the product of one of the most successful anti-capitalist global activist movements in the 21st century. Emily Bass, who has has been covering PEPFAR since its inception, will tell the story of the activism, terrorism, radicalism and patriotism that launched the war against a virus which has been called the most successful American foreign aid since the Marshall Plan.
Bass has spent more than twenty years writing about and working on HIV/AIDS in America and East and Southern Africa. Her writing has appeared numerous publications, including Esquire, The Lancet, Ms., n+1, Out, POZ, Slice, and has received notable mention in Best American Essays. The Plague War is forthcoming from PublicAffairs Press in 2020.
The Martin Duberman Visiting Scholar program fosters excellence in LGBT studies by providing funds for scholars to do research in the Library’s preeminent LGBT historical collections.
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