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Steven Thrasher

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Steven Thrasher
Thrasher seated at desk with book
Thrasher at the 2022 Texas Book Festival
Born
Ventura, California
Alma materNew York University
Occupation(s)Journalist, academic
EmployerNorthwestern University
Notable workThe Viral Underclass
TitleDaniel H. Renberg Chair of social justice in reporting

Steven William Thrasher (born c. 1978[1]) 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. In 2012, he won the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association Journalist of the Year award. His book The Viral Underclass was published in 2022.

Early life

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Steven Thrasher was born circa 1978 in Ventura, California and grew up in Oxnard, California.[1] His parents, Margaret (d. 2007) and William "Bill" Thrasher (d. 2003),[2][3] were white and Black respectively, and left Nebraska to marry in Iowa in 1958 because Nebraska law at the time barred the marriage.[4]

Thrasher attended Oxnard High School where his father was a teacher.[4] He graduated in 1995,[4] then earned a BFA from New York University Tisch School of the Arts.[1]

Career

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After graduating from Tisch, Thrasher worked as a script assistant on Saturday Night Live from 1999-2001, before working on the crews of several films including HBO Films' The Laramie Project.[1] Beginning in 2007, he worked as an interviewer collecting oral histories for the StoryCorps Project,[2] before becoming a staff writer at The Village Voice in 2009.[1] In 2012, Thrasher was laid off from the Voice.[1] He continued as a freelance journalist while working toward a doctorate in American studies from New York University in 2019.[1] Thrasher's journalism has also appeared in The Guardian,[5] Scientific American,[6] The New York Times,[7] and BuzzFeed.[8]

In 2014, Thrasher was approached to investigate the story of Michael "Tiger Mandigo" Johnson, a young Black gay man near St. Louis who had been arrested for HIV transmission. Thrasher proceeded to publish a series of articles arguing that Johnson's conviction had been racially charged. Johnson was released five years into his 30.5 years sentence, an unprecedented 25 years early.[9] Thrasher's coverage exposed how the HIV legislature reinforced stigma against patients and disincentivized people from getting tested, and how those affected by HIV criminalization, like Johnson, were often given unfair sentences. His work decriminalizing HIV led to his recognition as one of Out magazine's Out100 in 2019.[10]

Thrasher also returned to St. Louis in 2014 to cover the uprisings after the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson.[9]

He was the recipient of the National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association Journalist of the Year award 2012,[5][11][12][13][14] and the Al Neuharth Award for Innovation in Investigative Journalism 2015.[15] In 2017, he was inducted into the Hall of Fame for the American Sociological Association's journal Contexts,[16] and in 2019, he was awarded a $75,000 Creativity and Free Expression grant from the Ford Foundation.[17]

In 2019, Thrasher was appointed 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.[18] As the student speaker at the 2019 convocation ceremony for NYU's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, Thrasher expressed support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement "against the apartheid state government in Israel".[19] NYU president Andrew Hamilton, calling the speech "quite objectionable," said Thrasher had omitted these comments from the version of the speech submitted for review.[19][20]

In July 2024, Thrasher and three other Northwestern community members - including a fellow professor, a librarian, and a graduate student - were arrested by the Northwestern University Police Department and charged with allegedly obstructing law enforcement during a pro-Palestinian encampment on the university's campus that April. The charges, which were misdemeanors, carried a potential sentence of a year in prison and a fine of US$2,500.[21] All of the charges against Thrasher and the other educators were dropped by the Office of the Cook County State's Attorney on July 19, 2024.[22]

The Viral Underclass

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In August 2022, Thrasher published The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide with Celadon Books, an imprint of Macmillan.[23][24][25] In it, Thrasher presents a series of case studies to argue that structural inequality increases the effect of viruses like HIV and COVID-19 on marginalized groups like people of color, disabled people, and LGBT people.[26] The book received a starred review in Publishers Weekly.[27] In The Boston Globe, Jennifer Latson called The Viral Underclass an "engaging, enraging read."[28] In Nature, Jennifer Hochschild wrote, "Thrasher is an excellent investigator. The reader sees how and why the narratives develop in particular ways, and feels fury and despair, as well as occasional glimmers of hope. But the stories also leave lots of questions."[29]

References

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  1. ^ a b c d e f g Childs, Jeremy. "Oxnard native Steven Thrasher writes book on 'The Viral Underclass'". Ventura County Star. Archived from the original on August 6, 2022. Retrieved August 7, 2022.
  2. ^ a b Rubin, Bonnie Miller (April 7, 2008). "With microphone, memories saved". Chicago Tribune. pp. 1, 2. Retrieved August 9, 2022.
  3. ^ Hutkin, Erinn (June 27, 2003). "Educator's death stuns Oxnard". Ventura County Star. pp. B10. Retrieved August 9, 2022.
  4. ^ a b c Wenner, Gretchen (July 14, 2012). "Oxnard grad earns journalism award". Ventura County Star. pp. 3B. Retrieved August 9, 2022.
  5. ^ a b "Steven W Thrasher". The Guardian. October 28, 2014. Archived from the original on August 12, 2016. Retrieved October 26, 2016.
  6. ^ Thrasher, Steven W. (February 10, 2022). "There Is Nothing Normal about One Million People Dead from COVID". Scientific American. Archived from the original on July 28, 2022. Retrieved February 12, 2022.
  7. ^ Steven W. Thrasher (April 8, 2009). "Iowa's Family Values". The New York Times. Archived from the original on March 22, 2017. Retrieved October 26, 2016.
  8. ^ "Steven Thrasher (steventhrasher) on BuzzFeed". Buzzfeed.com. Archived from the original on July 5, 2016. Retrieved October 26, 2016.
  9. ^ a b Rueb, Emily S. (July 14, 2019). "He Emerged From Prison a Potent Symbol of H.I.V. Criminalization". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Archived from the original on December 21, 2021. Retrieved July 11, 2022.
  10. ^ "These Out100 Honorees Are Doing the Work to End the HIV Epidemic". www.out.com. November 23, 2019. Archived from the original on July 11, 2022. Retrieved July 11, 2022.
  11. ^ "NLGJA Awards Recognize Steven W. Thrasher, Chris Geidner, Anderson Cooper and More". Glaad.org. July 10, 2012. Archived from the original on August 18, 2016. Retrieved October 26, 2016.
  12. ^ Bach Polakowski. "Steven W. Thrasher NLGJA Journalist of the Year". NLGJA. Archived from the original on June 16, 2016. Retrieved October 26, 2016.
  13. ^ Wes Young. "Steven W. Thrasher - 2012 Winner". NLGJA. Archived from the original on August 17, 2016. Retrieved October 26, 2016.
  14. ^ "Journalist of the Year Archives". NLGJA. Archived from the original on August 17, 2016. Retrieved October 26, 2016.
  15. ^ Bach Polakowski. "Recognizes 2015 Excellence in Journalism Award Winners". NLGJA. Archived from the original on July 30, 2016. Retrieved October 26, 2016.
  16. ^ "Steven Thrasher - Medill - Northwestern University". www.medill.northwestern.edu. Archived from the original on August 6, 2022. Retrieved July 11, 2022.
  17. ^ sqd3967 (July 24, 2020). "Steven Thrasher Awarded Ford Foundation Creativity and Free Expression Grant". ISGMH. Archived from the original on July 11, 2022. Retrieved July 11, 2022.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  18. ^ "Steven Thrasher Assistant Professor and Daniel H. Renberg Chair". Northwestern University. Archived from the original on November 15, 2020. Retrieved November 22, 2020.
  19. ^ a b ROSSELLA TERCATIN. "DOCTORAL GRADUATE PRAISES BDS AT NYU CONVOCATION CEREMONY". jpost.com. Archived from the original on May 24, 2019. Retrieved May 23, 2019.
  20. ^ Aaron Bandler (May 23, 2019). "NYU President Calls BDS-Supporting Graduation Speech 'Quite Objectionable'". Jewish Journal. Archived from the original on May 23, 2019. Retrieved May 23, 2019.
  21. ^ Kurian Philip, Lisa (July 18, 2024). "Northwestern police arrest four educators, months after pro-Palestinian encampment". WBEZ. Retrieved July 23, 2024.
  22. ^ Kurian Philip, Lisa (July 19, 2024). "Prosecutors drop charges filed by Northwestern police against educators involved in campus encampment". WBEZ. Retrieved July 23, 2024.
  23. ^ "Why protecting the 'viral underclass' can keep us all healthy : It's Been a Minute". NPR.org. Archived from the original on August 7, 2022. Retrieved August 7, 2022.
  24. ^ "The Tie Between Inequality and Illness Is Starker Than Ever". Them. August 2, 2022. Archived from the original on August 7, 2022. Retrieved August 8, 2022.
  25. ^ Rosen, Charlotte (August 6, 2022). "Steven Thrasher on "The Viral Underclass"". ISSN 0027-8378. Archived from the original on August 7, 2022. Retrieved August 8, 2022.
  26. ^ Nuriddin, Ayah (August 5, 2022). "Inequality goes viral The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide Steven W. Thrasher Celadon Books, 2022. 352 pp". Science. 377 (6606): 583. doi:10.1126/science.add5428. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 35926018. S2CID 251348383. Archived from the original on August 5, 2022. Retrieved August 8, 2022.
  27. ^ "The Viral Underclass: The Human Toll When Inequality and Disease Collide by Steven W Thrasher". Publishers Weekly. Retrieved August 8, 2022.
  28. ^ Latson, Jennifer (July 29, 2022). "The virus of inequality in 'The Viral Underclass'". The Boston Globe. Archived from the original on July 30, 2022. Retrieved August 8, 2022.
  29. ^ Hochschild, Jennifer (August 1, 2022). "The double toll of viruses and social injustice". Nature. 608 (7921): 29–30. Bibcode:2022Natur.608...29H. doi:10.1038/d41586-022-02075-2. PMID 35915247. S2CID 251254756.
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