Interested in learning more about the world and history? Suffolk Discovers meets to discuss a new theme that explores the cultures and backgrounds of people in our communities. For adults.

No registration required to join our viewing party at North Suffolk Library. Organizations and local services supporting community members with HIV/AIDS such as the Minority AIDS Support and the LGBT Life Center, along with the Tidewater Queer History Project, will be on-site at the viewing party. 

Registration required to attend virtually. Registered participants will provide their email address to receive a link to the Zoom meeting at least 15 minutes before the event begins.

About the Talk

Having spent a ground-breaking career studying the racialization, policing and criminalization of HIV, Dr. Thrasher has come to understand a deeper truth at the heart of our society: that there are vast inequalities in who is able to survive viruses and that the ways in which viruses spread, kill and take their toll are much more dependent on social structures than they are on biology alone. Told through the heart-rending stories of friends, activists and teachers navigating the novel coronavirus, HIV and other viruses, Dr. Thrasher brings the reader with him as he delves into the viral underclass and lays bare its inner workings. In the tradition of Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste and Michelle Alexander’s The New Jim Crow, The Viral Underclass helps us understand the world more deeply by showing the fraught relationship between privilege and survival.

About the Speaker

Steven William Thrasher is an American journalist and academic. In 2019, he became the inaugural Daniel H. Renberg Chair of social justice in reporting and an assistant professor of journalism at Northwestern University's Medill School of Journalism.