Introduction: Queer immunities/immunologies, queer virology

In this Introduction, I introduce the background and motivations for the special issue. I then move on to introduce its main articles. These include: a conversation conducted by myself with the queer theorist Tim Dean; an examination of the music albums of Turkey’s first high-profile HIV patient, Murtaza Elgin; an article considering a number of Wiktor Grodecki’s films and his depiction of the Czech queer sex industry of the 1990s; an article that looks at the integration of Native American art, tradition, and healing practices into public health, specifically with a focus on the work of the artist Sheldon Raymore; an article on the Black queer AIDS activist Gregory Smith; an article that considers the 1989 digital montage series Viral Landscapes by Helen Chadwick; and an article on HIV-related trans activism in Eastern Europe and Central Asia (EECA).