Dissertation Research: Narratives of Living with HIV: Accountability, Community and the Transformation of Suffering

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This project will investigate, through people's narratives and life histories, how AIDS patients' interpretations of their condition relates to factors facilitating coping, such as seeking social support and initiating self-treatment. Key aspects of interpretation examined include accountability (explaining the cause of infections and whether one is to blame for it) and constructs of community (relating one's self to other HIV+ individuals). Indianapolis' social and political conservatism and absence of a politically powerful gay community heighten the homophobia and stigma associated with AIDS, making it more typical of experiences of AIDS patients outside the epidemic's epicenters. This study will contribute to cultural anthropology by demonstrating how discourses link individuals with powerful institutional domains. It will contribute to American ethnography by exploring how people use "negative" and "positive" aspects of community in constructing identities. Lastly, it will contribute to AIDS research and the medical community by connecting "ways of speaking" about HIV infection and strategies and choices for living with it.