New Books In Public Policy

This episode features a conversation with Dr. Katie Batza on their recently published book, AIDS in the Heartland: How Unlikely Coalitions Created a Blueprint for LGBTQ Politics. Published by the University of North Carolina Press, AIDS in the Heartland demonstrates the unique collaborations of crop duster pilots, church van drivers, nuns, tribal leaders, and synagogue ladies in places such as decommissioned convents, backyard barbecues, high school gyms, and city parks that fostered loud, radical queer politics and homonormative strategies alike. As a result, Batza contends with the respectability of the heart of the nation and how it prevails as core values in national LBGTQ political strategies today. Histories of AIDS in the United States typically regard San Francisco and New York to be the epicenters of the crisis. The Midwest, if considered at all, appears as a footnote to the social, medical, and political struggles of coastal queer communities and communities of color. But the US heartland cultivate