logo
episode-header-image
Nov 2024
33m 15s

Paul M. Renfro, "The Life and Death of R...

NEW BOOKS NETWORK
About this episode

In the 1980s, as HIV/AIDS ravaged queer communities and communities of color in the United States and beyond, a straight white teenager named Ryan White emerged as the face of the epidemic. Diagnosed with hemophilia at birth, Ryan contracted HIV through contaminated blood products. In 1985, he became a household name after he was barred from attending his Indiana middle school. As Ryan appeared on nightly news broadcasts and graced the covers of popular magazines, he was embraced by music icons and well-known athletes, achieving a curious kind of stardom. 

Analyzing his struggle and celebrity, Paul M. Renfro's powerful biography grapples with the contested meanings of Ryan's life, death, and afterlives. As Renfro argues in The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America (UNC Press, 2024), Ryan's fight to attend school forced the American public to reckon with prevailing misconceptions about the AIDS epidemic. Yet his story also reinforced the hierarchies at the heart of the AIDS crisis. Because the "innocent" Ryan had contracted HIV "through no fault of his own," as many put it, his story was sometimes used to blame presumably "guilty" populations for spreading the virus. Reexamining Ryan's story through this lens, Renfro reveals how the consequences of this stigma continue to pervade policy and cultural understandings of HIV/AIDS today.

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/public-policy

Up next
Jul 6
Margaret Cook Andersen, "Fertile Expectations: The Politics of Involuntary Childlessness in Twentieth-Century France" (Manchester UP, 2025)
An engaging history of motherhood, demography, and infertility in twentieth-century France, Fertile expectations: The politics of involuntary childlessness in twentieth-century France (Manchester University Press, 2025) by Dr. Margaret Andersen explores fraught political and cult ... Show More
45m 35s
Jul 6
Kelsea Best, Kayly Ober, Robert A. McLeman, "Migration and Displacement in a Changing Climate" (Cambridge UP, 2025)
This book provides insight into the impact of climate change on human mobility - including both migration and displacement - by synthesizing key concepts, research, methodology, policy, and emerging issues surrounding the topic. It illuminates the connections between climate chan ... Show More
47m 18s
Jul 4
Didi Kuo, "The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don't" (Oxford UP, 2025)
As the crisis of democratic capitalism sweeps the globe, The Great Retreat: How Political Parties Should Behave and Why They Don't (Oxford University Press, 2025) makes the controversial argument that what democracies require most are stronger political parties that serve as inte ... Show More
55m 10s
Recommended Episodes
Dec 2023
Jenny Trinitapoli, "An Epidemic of Uncertainty: Navigating HIV and Young Adulthood in Malawi" (U Chicago Press, 2023)
A decade-long study of young adulthood in Malawi demonstrates the impact of widespread HIV status uncertainty, laying bare the sociological implications of what is not known. An Epidemic of Uncertainty: Navigating HIV and Young Adulthood in Malawi (U Chicago Press, 2023) advances ... Show More
41m 45s
Feb 2024
Laurence Ralph, "Sito: An American Teenager and the City That Failed Him" (Grand Central Publishing, 2023)
In September of 2019, Luis Alberto Quiñonez—known as Sito— was shot to death as he sat in his car in the Mission District of San Francisco. He was nineteen. His killer, Julius Williams, was seventeen. It was the second time the teens had encountered one another. The first, five y ... Show More
48m 50s
Nov 2024
HIV Awareness | 2 Campaigners on Living With HIV & Breaking The Stigma
Despite being nearly 45 years on from the AIDS epidemic of the 1980s, HIV remains one of the most misunderstood diseases. To help sort fact from fiction and understand what it’s like living with HIV, Charlotte Collins is joined by campaigner Sue Hunter, who was diagnosed in 2006, ... Show More
48m 39s
Mar 2025
Immune Booster #10 HIV in the brain with Amanda Brown
Immune Booster #10 HIV in the brain with Amanda Brown March 18, 2025 From the The Society for Leukocyte Biology 2024 conference at Michigan State University, Cindy and Brianne sit down with Amanda Brown from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine to talk about her career and the resear ... Show More
30m 58s
Feb 2024
'Women Don’t Get AIDS, They Just Die From It'
From the very earliest days of the epidemic, women got infected with HIV and died from AIDS — just like men. But from the earliest days, this undeniable fact was largely ignored — by the public, the government and even the medical establishment. The consequences of this blindspot ... Show More
44m 5s
Jun 2024
The Aftermath: The Death of Freddie Mercury
New Guest Expert! On this week’s Aftermath, Rebecca speaks with Dr. Marika Cifor about the evolution of the AIDS epidemic in the United States. Author of Viral Cultures: Activist Archiving in the Age of AIDS, Dr. Cifor describes the social, political and structural climate in Ame ... Show More
30m 24s
May 2024
Infected blood scandal, Anita Pallenberg, Feminist theatre
The long awaited final report of the public inquiry into the infected blood scandal is published today, The inquiry was announced in 2017 after years of campaigning by victims. From the 1970s to the early 1990s, approximately 30,000 people were infected with blood contaminated wi ... Show More
56m 28s
Apr 2024
Erin L. Durban, "The Sexual Politics of Empire: Postcolonial Homophobia in Haiti" (U Illinois Press, 2023)
Evangelical Christians and members of the global LGBTQI human rights movement have vied for influence in Haiti since the 2010 earthquake. Each side accuses the other of serving foreign interests. Yet each proposes future foreign interventions on behalf of their respective causes ... Show More
1h 3m
Jun 16
CDC Vaccine Panel Fired by RFK, Jr., Oceans Grow More Acidic, and Pangolins Threatened by Hunting
Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., has fired the experts on the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s vaccine advisory panel, sparking concern among public health officials. Ocean acidification has crossed a critical threshold, posing serious risks to marine life around the globe. An ... Show More
10m 14s
Feb 2017
A Conversation w/Kecia J
In this week’s episode, we bring to you a special edition of the podcast in observance of February 7th being National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day, Chris is talking with Kecia Johnson, better known as Kecia J. Kecia Johnson is an author, AIDS educator, Talent Manager and Truth St ... Show More
24m 32s