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Doctoral Student in Sociology and Women's Studies
Office Location(s): 1122 Lane Hall Phone: 734.763.2047 thoppe@umich.edu
Scholarly Interests: My interests broadly include sexuality, HIV/AIDS, public health, and the law. My current dissertation project explores the ways in which public officials identity, monitor, and regulate cases in which they suspect HIV-positive people of having sex without first disclosing their HIV-positive status – a felony under Michigan law. In this project, I rely on qualitative interviews and survey responses of health officials and district attorneys who are responsible for handling these cases, as well as content analysis of court transcripts where individuals have been prosecuted under Michigan’s HIV disclosure law. David Halperin (English, Women’s Studies) and Renee Anspach (Sociology) co-chair my committee alongside members Sandra Levitsky (Sociology) and Sarah Burgard (Sociology). Findings from my previous research project on gay men’s identities as “bottoms” and the way sexual scripts associated with this positionality operate as a form of social structure that have implications for HIV risk negotiations was just published in the journal Sexualities (title: “Circuits of Power, Circuits of Pleasure: Sexual Scripting in Gay Men’s Bottom Narratives”). This paper won the Sociologist AIDS Network’s Martin Levine Student Essay Award.
