Paul Renfro is an associate professor of history and an affiliate faculty and advisory board member in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program. He earned his PhD in history from the University of Iowa, where he was a Louis Pelzer Dissertation Fellow. Before arriving at Florida State University in 2018, he served as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.

Renfro is the author of two books: The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America (University of North Carolina Press, 2024) and Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State (Oxford University Press, 2020). He is also the coeditor of Growing Up America: Youth and Politics since 1945 (University of Georgia Press, 2019), and his scholarly articles have appeared in Feminist Studies and Disability Studies Quarterly. Renfro regularly writes for popular outlets such as TIME, the Washington Post, the New Republic, Slate, Dissent, Teen Vogue, and Jacobin, and he has been interviewed for stories in The Nation, the New Yorker, ELLE, Jezebel, The Appeal, Salon, and Mother Jones.

He is represented by Lucy Cleland at Calligraph.  

Teaching:
Spring 2025—The United States in the Twenty-First Century (AMH 3279-1); The United States since 1945 (AMH 4270-1)

Fall 2024—The United States since 1877 (AMH 2020-1); AIDS Ain’t Over: Histories of an Ongoing Epidemic (AMH 3930-3)