Brendan McHugh

Signing for Life: Deaf Gay Activists Navigate the AIDS Epidemic, 1986–1991

Before a small crowd of journalists at San Diego’s Point Loma Hospital, through sign language and their interpreters, John Canady’s partner J.T. Tupper, and sister, Mary Noble, recounted the ordeal their loved one endured prior to his dying of AIDS at the age of 37.[1] On March 18, 1986, Canady, a deaf postal worker, had… Read more →

Just Being There: The AIDS Crisis and the Shanti Project’s Hospital Counselor Program

When Ward 5B premiered at the 2019 Cannes Film Festival, the nurses of the first AIDS inpatient unit in the United States walked down the red carpet with movie stars Julianne Moore and Halle Berry. Garnering critical and popular praise as well as Oscar buzz, Ward 5B explores the famed AIDS unit from the time it… Read more →