Steven Epstein (academic)

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Steven Epstein is an American academic and Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, San Diego.

He is widely published, and has written two books, Learning By Heart: AIDS and Schoolchildren in America's Communities, with David L. Kirp, Marlene Strong Franks, Jonathan Simon, Doug Conaway, and John Lewis (1989) and Impure Science: AIDS, Activism, and the Politics of Knowledge in 1996. The latter book has been reviewed by the New York Times [1], the Washington Post [2], and others.

Impure Science talks about how AIDS patients in the 1980s were able to transform their status from being a disease constituency to being experts in experience. AIDS activism was seen by many as being the template for patient and health groups activities. The book won the C. Wright Mills Award for the best first book published by a sociologist.