Adriana Garriga-Lopez, PhD: States, Bodies, and Epidemics

Adriana Garriga-Lopez, PhD, explained the challenges of making her students in the middle of Michigan understand the significance of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in Puerto Rico. She believes that US Americans have a responsibility to educate themselves and to act on behalf of those who've been under the colonial domination, since she feels everyone is implicated in the movement to find a solution. Garriga-Lopez also discussed that when talking about HIV, you're not just talking about one thing; you're talking about many different epidemics, since different locations have different profiles.

Furthermore, Garriga-Lopez explained that she uses her class, "States, Bodies, and Epidemics," as a platform to touch upon real life situations. During the Ebola outbreak, she lead a discussion with her students on the similarities and differences between t he response to Ebola and the response to HIV in Africa, and now the response to Ebola v. the response to Zika has to do with the history of HIV.