On Thursday, Feb. 19, the Center for Presidential History (CPH) at Southern Methodist University will host historian Paul Renfro who will discuss his new book The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America. Renfro will share the story of Ryan White, and how his life, death, and legacy can help to understand both the HIV/AIDS epidemic of the 1980s and the political and cultural consequences up through today.
From CPH:
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, 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.
This event is will be held in Dallas Hall (McCord Auditorium, Rm 306) and is free and open to the public. The event is presented by the Center for Presidential History, with support and partnership from the SMU Women’s and Gender Studies Program and the Scott Hawkins Fund of the Dedman College Interdisciplinary Institute.
Register for the free event here.
–Rich Lopez