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Author Meets Readers – Criminalized Lives: HIV and Legal Violence
April 24 @ 5:30 pm - 7:00 pm
Register here: https://fpga.youarein.ca/author-meets-readers-apr24
Canada has been known as a hot spot for HIV criminalization where the act of not disclosing one’s HIV-positive status to sex partners has historically been regarded as a serious criminal offence. Criminalized Lives describes how this approach has disproportionately harmed the poor, Black and Indigenous people, gay men, and women in Canada. In this book, people who have been criminally accused of not disclosing their HIV-positive status, detail the many complexities of disclosure, and the violence that results from being criminalized.
Accompanied by portraits from artist Eric Kostiuk Williams, the profiles examine whether the criminal legal system is really prepared to handle the nuances and ethical dilemmas faced everyday by people living with HIV. By offering personal stories of people who have faced criminalization first-hand, Alexander McClelland questions common assumptions about HIV, the role of punishment, and the violence that results from the criminal legal system’s legacy of categorizing people as either victims or perpetrators.
About the Authors
Alexander McClelland is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Criminology, Carleton University. He is the author of Criminalized Lives: HIV and Legal Violence, released in 2024, from the Q+ Public Series at Rutgers University Press, which includes illustrations from queer comic artist, Eric Kostiuk Williams, with a foreword from US-based HIV activist and movement leader, Robert Suttle. The book examines the histories and experiences of people living with HIV in Canada who had been criminalized due to allegations of HIV non-disclosure, and it also chronicles the vibrant and vocal social movement calling for justice, and change, under the slogan #HIVISNOTACRIME.
Eric Kostiuk Williams is a cartoonist and illustrator based in Toronto, Canada. He has several comics publications, including 2AM Eternal and Our Wretched Town Hall.
About the Panelists
Lara Karaian is an Associate Professor in the Institute of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Carleton University. Her research examines the intersections between sexuality, technology, representation, affect, and law. Her current SSHRC funded research, titled “Sex/Crime in the Era of Immersive, Interactive, and Intelligent Technologies,” examines the relationship between emerging sexual technologies and legal constructions of ‘sex crime’. Dr. Karaian serves on the editorial board of the journal Porn Studies. Her research has been published in an array of peer-reviewed legal, sexuality, and criminology journals and edited collections. Dr. Karaian is currently writing a sole-authored manuscript on deepfake pornography panics.
Ryan Conrad is an Adjunct Research Professor at the Feminist Institute of Social Transformation at Carleton University where he also teaches in the Human Rights & Social Justice program. Ryan is an artist, and cultural studies scholar whose research, teaching, and cultural production interests in the study of sexuality include queer studies, queer of colour critique, affect theory, archival practices, film and media, HIV/AIDS, sex work, migration, and social movement history. Conrad’s current SSHRC funded research project titled Sex Worker Self-Authoring in the Canadian Women’s Movement Archive explores the holdings of the CWMA housed in the Archives and Special Collections at the University of Ottawa. The project will locate and animate written and visual materials produced by sex workers and the sex workers’ rights movement in Canada from 1977-1992.