Paul Renfro

Paul Renfro is a professor of History and an affiliate faculty and advisory board member in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies program. He is the author of Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State (Oxford University Press, 2020) and The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS and Inequality in America (University of North Carolina Press, 2024), which received an honorable mention in the general nonfiction category at the Florida Book Awards. Alongside Susan Eckelmann Berghel and Sara Fieldston, Renfro also coedited the anthology Growing Up America: Youth and Politics since 1945 (University of Georgia Press, 2019).

Renfro is currently writing two books, the first of which focuses on the 1979–81 Atlanta youth murders. Both books will be published by Liveright, a division of W. W. Norton & Company.

Renfro’s public-facing writing has appeared in 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, and other outlets.

He is represented by Lucy Cleland at the Frances Goldin Literary Agency.