I am currently at work on a cultural study of the Herpes Simplex Virus (HSV), tracing its cultural manifestations since the early 1980s, when the rise of HIV/AIDS, and the introduction of acyclovir, a drug for treating herpes, altered the disease’s social significance and signification. By examining clinical, social/behavioral, and cultural narratives of the disease, my monograph, tentatively titled: Herpes: A Cultural Biography, interrogates the exponential rise in herpes diagnoses both nationally and transnationally, particularly in women of color, as well as the increasing stigma attached to the disease. This project uses the herpes virus as a case study for exploring changes to our understanding of sexual health in the post-AIDS climate and the effects of these changes on the lives of sexually and racially marginalized individuals and communities.
I am a member of the NSF (National Science Foundation) funded Knowledge of AIDS Research Network.
I am also co-editing, with Emily Owens (Brown Univeristy) and Suzanna Waters (Northeastern University) a special issue of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society on the theme “Lesbian Studies, Now”
My research interests reflect my multidisciplinary work in the fields of social and behavioral health sciences and humanities based gender and sexuality studies. My work is situated across the fields of feminist and queer theory, cultural studies, and critical health studies. I am particularly interested in understanding the traffic between on the ground health and social movements and critical theory. My current research is motivated by my experience as a Public Health researcher in the traditional social sciences. As a researcher in the field of social and behavioral health for lesbian and bisexual women after breast cancer, I found that the hard social sciences left little room to explore the meaning of the overlapping experiences of gender, sexuality, and illness. My current work bridges a traditionally empirical approach to the questions of the study of health with a humanistic concern with how we make meaning out of health, death, and identity.
Mairead Sullivan, MSW, PhD 