AIDS and American History:
Four Perspectives on
Experiential Learning

Douglas Bailey, Gabby DeVinny, Carre Gordon,
and Paul John Schadewald

How can we uncover and understand the history of acquired immune deficiency syndrome (AIDS) at the local, state, and national levels? How do responses to AIDS illuminate developments in medicine, public policy, culture, and religion? What can AIDS teach us about universal issues of sickness, healing, suffering, death, and mourning? How can we communicate these experiences to the university and to the wider community?	1
During the 1997-1998 school year, a group of undergraduate students, their instructor, and community members explored those questions in two consecutively offered versions of an experimental course at Indiana University, "AIDS and America: Public Policy, Health Care, and Social Responsibility." The first version utilized experiential learning activities to examine AIDS and its historical, cultural, and social context. Thirteen community members attended class as guest speakers or as participants in round tables on specific topics, such as the history of AIDS and legal activism and religious responses to AIDS. After visiting the regional display of the AIDS Memorial Quilt, class members designed their own public history projects to communicate the story of AIDS to the campus and the wider community.	2
Second semester, Indiana University reoffered the course with an additional service-learning component to help build relationships between the university and local community organizations and to help students reflect upon their own relationships with the problems raised in the course. The course met twice weekly in the classroom and worked outside the classroom with Monroe County's Community AIDS Action Group (CAAG), a coalition of AIDS support, prevention, and education organizations. Instead of a final public history project, the students completed several projects with the CAAG, including administering a needs assessment survey to people who have tested positive for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) in Bloomington, Indiana, and surrounding areas. The final paper asked students to reflect on their service-learning experiences in light of course readings, lectures, and discussions.	3
Both courses addressed broad themes in American life by first exploring the problems of the local community. The courses blurred the distinction between the university and the community by creating reciprocal relationships of knowledge and service between citizens outside the university and students and instructors associated with the university. Community members offered diverse experiences that the students and the instructor needed, while the students and the instructor contributed their time and energy on community projects. Students not only developed analytical skills and mastered a body of knowledge but also learned about the needs of the local community and how to communicate this knowledge to others.1	4
This essay attempts to demonstrate how experiential learning can benefit the practice of history. We suggest that by addressing local concerns and by including community members and organizations within the curriculum, historians can engage a wider public than they normally do in specialized monographs or traditional college courses. Experiential learning opens a borderland between the academy and the local community, one marked by dialogue, service, and respect. The process models an approach to doing history that is self-conscious about the creation and uses of knowledge.2	. . .