Today, the LSHTM Library & Archives service hosted a short HIV/AIDS gems of the collection session for some visiting American students from Oklahoma State University. As the students were attending a summer school based at the University of Cambridge on HIV/AIDS in the United States and Transnational Politics and Culture it seemed appropriate to include a few items from the papers of Joseph Sonnabend, whose papers are a wonderful source for early responses to AIDS in 1980s New York City. In additional to the United States material I also included UNAIDS material from the Piot collection that included key international developed such as the establishment of the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) and the United Nations Special Session on the 25-27th June 2001. Finally, no HIV/AIDS gems session would be complete without a large selection of HIV/AIDS prevention campaign materials from the UK and Europe including posters, postcards, condoms, bumbags. trading cards and sugar sachets.
HIV/AIDS Gems session, held in the Wellcome Gallery on the 15th July.
The session was attended by twenty US students from Oklahoma State University, studying a variety of majors.
UK HIV/AIDS prevention material and tabloid press cuttings from 1980s were also displayed.
The particular highlight of the session was finding US AIDS related material in the Sonnabend papers. Including for the session was a leaflet for the first AIDS fundraiser, Showers, that was held in New York in April 1982.
An affidavit from Joseph Sonnabend from 1983 contesting the use of one of his articles by the University of Texas to ban homosexuals from campus on the grounds that they were a public health threat. He strongly refuted the use of his article and cites examples of how the findings of his article were distorted by the University.
