Welcome! I am an assistant professor of sociology at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro. I came to UNCG from University at Albany and, prior to that, a postdoctoral fellowship in the Criminology, Law and Society Department at the University of California at Irvine. My research examines the social control of disease and sexuality.
I have published three books. The first, "The War on Sex," is a collection of essays co-edited with David Halperin analyzing the criminalization of sex. The second, "Punishing Disease," is a monograph explaining the rise of punitive responses to HIV and other infectious diseases. In 2018, "Punishing Disease" was awarded the Lambda Literary Award for LGBTQ Studies. The third book, "Unsafe Words," is a collection of essays co-edited with Shantel Gabrieal Buggs on sex, consent, and harm from a queer perspective.
PRE-ORDER NOW: Queer people may not have invented sex, but queers have long been pioneers in imagining new ways to have it. Yet their voices have been largely absent from the #MeToo conversation. What can queer people learn from the #MeToo conversation? And what can queer communities teach the rest of the world about ethical sex? This provocative book brings together academics, activists, artists, and sex workers to tackle challenging questions about sex, power, consent, and harm. While responding to the need for sex to be consensual and mutually pleasurable, these chapter authors resist the heteronormative assumptions, class norms, and racial privilege underlying much #MeToo discourse. The essays reveal the tools that queer communities themselves have developed to practice ethical sex—from the sex worker negotiating with her client to the gay man having anonymous sex in the back room. At the same time, they explore how queer communities might better prevent and respond to sexual violence without recourse to a police force that is frequently racist, homophobic, and transphobic. Telling a queerer side of the #MeToo story, Unsafe Words dares to challenge dogmatic assumptions about sex and consent while developing tools and language to promote more ethical and more pleasurable sex for everyone. Pre-order your copy now!
NOW AVAILABLE: The past fifty years are conventionally understood to have witnessed an uninterrupted expansion of sexual rights and liberties in the United States. This state-of-the-art collection tells a different story: while progress has been made in marriage equality, reproductive rights, access to birth control, and other areas, government and civil society are waging a war on stigmatized sex by means of law, surveillance, and social control. The contributors document the history and operation of sex offender registries and the criminalization of HIV, as well as highly punitive measures against sex work that do more to harm women than to combat human trafficking. They reveal that sex crimes are punished more harshly than other crimes, while new legal and administrative regulations drastically restrict who is permitted to have sex. By examining how the ever-intensifying war on sex affects both privileged and marginalized communities, the essays collected here show why sexual liberation is indispensable to social justice and human rights. Order your copy!
NOW AVAILABLE: From the very beginning of the epidemic, AIDS was linked to punishment. Calls to punish people living with HIV – mostly stigmatized minorities – began before doctors could even name the disease. Punitive attitudes towards AIDS prompted lawmakers around the country to introduce legislation aimed at criminalizing the behaviors of people living with HIV. Punishing Disease explains how this happened and with what consequences. Now that the door to criminalizing sickness is open, what other ailments will follow? With lawmakers moving to tack on additional diseases such as hepatitis and meningitis, the question is more than academic. Order your copy today!
In August 2014, I completed my PhD in Sociology and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan. My dissertation examined the application of HIV law in Michigan, particulary the felony disclosure statute that makes it illegal for HIV-positive people to have sex without first disclosing their HIV-positive status. You can read the entire dissertation here. In addition, articles based on it are published in Social Problems, Social Science & Medicine, and Punishment & Society.
Friday, March 12
Boston University (Zoom)
In this talk, I analyze the responsibility politics the followed in the wake of the 2020 New Year's Eve White Party in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. I argue that gay men were yet again pitted against each other in the face of a deadly epidemic, obscuring the real drivers of the epidemic and repeating many of the moralistic errors made in early HIV prevention efforts.
Monday, February 22
University of California at Berkeley (Zoom)
In this talk, I will report and consider demographic findings from a recent analysis of civil commitment facilities conducted by myself and colleagues at the Williams Institute at UCLA. We find that there are over 6000 men currently civilly committed for sex offenses in the United States. In almost every state analyzed, detainees are disproportionately Black. And, in the two states for which it was possible to consider detainee sexuality, we find that detainees are also disproportionately men who have sex with men. I consider these findings and explore next steps in this developing project.
Friday, November 13
North Carolina AIDS Action Network (Zoom)
In this keynote lecture to the NCAAN's annual confernce delivered via Zoom, Trevor Hoppe discusses responsibility politics in the face of pandemics, drawing a line from HIV to COVID-19.
Monday, January 29
Petrie-Flom Center for Health Law, Policy, Biotechnology and Bioethics (Cambridge, MA)
Trevor Hoppe gives a talk to Harvard Law School on his book, Punishing Disease: HIV and the criminalization of sickness. The book examines how and why U.S. policymakers and public health systems have adopted coercive and punitive responses to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS. It also looks at how others diseases have been punished throughout history, and cautions against the extension of criminalization to diseases such as hepatitis and meningitis.
Tuesday, November 7
Lecture Series (New York, NY)
St. Francis College hosted a panel discussion November 7, 2017 featuring the co-editor and contributors to a new book that examines how law, surveillance, and social control are used to stigmatize sex and fight against marriage equality, reproductive rights and access to birth control. Co-editor of The War on Sex, Trevor Hoppe (Assistant Professor of Sociology, University at Albany) was joined by contributors Judith Levine (author, Harmful to Minors: The Perils of Protecting Children from Sex) and Mary Anne Case (Arnold I. Shure Professor of Law, University of Chicago) for the discussion on the criminalization of sex.
Below, find my current CV. Or click here to download the PDF if using mobile.
The past fifty years are conventionally understood to have witnessed an uninterrupted expansion of sexual rights and liberties in the United States. This state-of-the-art collection tells a different story: while progress has been made in marriage equality, reproductive rights, access to birth control, and other areas, government and civil society are waging a war on stigmatized sex by means of law, surveillance, and social control.
From the very beginning of the epidemic, AIDS was linked to punishment. Calls to punish people living with HIV – mostly stigmatized minorities – began before doctors had even settled on a name for the disease. Punitive attitudes towards AIDS prompted lawmakers around the country to introduce legislation aimed at criminalizing the behaviors of people living with HIV. Punishing Disease explains how this happened —and its consequences. With the door to criminalizing sickness now open, what other ailments will follow? As lawmakers move to tack on additional diseases such as hepatitis and meningitis to existing law, the question is more than academic
Queer people may not have invented sex, but queers have long been pioneers in imagining new ways to have it. Yet their voices have been largely absent from the #MeToo conversation. What can queer people learn from the #MeToo conversation? And what can queer communities teach the rest of the world about ethical sex? This provocative book brings together academics, activists, artists, and sex workers to tackle challenging questions about sex, power, consent, and harm. While responding to the need for sex to be consensual and mutually pleasurable, these chapter authors resist the heteronormative assumptions, class norms, and racial privilege underlying much #MeToo discourse. The essays reveal the tools that queer communities themselves have developed to practice ethical sex—from the sex worker negotiating with her client to the gay man having anonymous sex in the back room. At the same time, they explore how queer communities might better prevent and respond to sexual violence without recourse to a police force that is frequently racist, homophobic, and transphobic. Telling a queerer side of the #MeToo story, Unsafe Words dares to challenge dogmatic assumptions about sex and consent while developing tools and language to promote more ethical and more pleasurable sex for everyone.
The easiest way to get in touch with me is through the contact form below. If you are a member of the media on deadline, please put DEADLINE at the beginning of the subject.
