AIDS, se lo conosci lo studi. Un primo bilancio (non solo) storiografico

The article provides an updated and interdisciplinary review of the international research on HIV/AIDS in several fields of the humanities. Works in sociology, political sciences, economics, law, mass media, literature and philosophy are examined in order to show how HIV/AIDS-related issues have been investigated from 1981 to nowadays. Particular attention is paid to historiography, which has started dealing with HIV/AIDS only in the last decades. The essay analyzes the authors (both non-academic and academic historians), the sources, the perspectives and the goals of the available histories of AIDS. Moreover, some crucial methodological issues are faced, in order to underline the risks and the opportunities of writing bottom-up, transdisciplinary and transnational histories of HIV/AIDS. In so doing, this review describes the most relevant characteristics of the available works and suggests how new studies can improve our knowledge on this crucial subject in the following years.