One epidemic, countless problems: Collective identity, HIV/AIDS advocacy, and new social movement theory

This thesis critically examines how gay and hemophiliac populations in the United States mobilized in response to pandemic infection with the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in the 1980s. The organization and activities of groups such as the Gay Men's Health Crisis (GMHC), the AIDS Coalition To Unleash Power (ACT UP), and the National Hemophilia Foundation (NHF) reveal how the response of these groups to Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) epidemic was influenced by history and collective identity. Employing new social movement theory as a framework to analyze HIV/AIDS advocacy organizations shows their impact on medical and pharmaceutical policy, as well as the discursive changes they wrought upon hegemonic narratives of stigma and homophobia. By challenging normative codes of sexuality and illness, mobilization around HIV/AIDS was unique among social moverments engendered by health crises.