Panel Discussion

Dan Royles will discuss the global history of the twentieth century through the lens of the HIV/AIDS pandemic that was recognized beginning in 1981. Like any microbe HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, cares little for national borders. However, its spread from a localized outbreak in central Africa in the first half of the twentieth century to a global pandemic that has claimed tens of millions of lives was facilitated by ongoing processes of colonization, national liberation, and the development of global trade networks. In addition, the neoliberal model of globalization itself became a target for AIDS activists at the end of the twentieth century, as they pushed back against a global intellectual property regime that prioritized pharmaceutical patents over people's lives. In these ways, HIV/AIDS stands out as both a deadly artifact of the global history of the twentieth century and a means to critique the inter/transnational structures that have shaped, and taken shape through, that same history.