Sociology Ph.D. Students on the Job Market

Dissertation: "Liquid Masculinities: On Men's Gender Identities and Politics"

This ethnographic study of three groups of men with different gender-political affiliations investigates the relationship between gender identity, social context, and gender politics. Through an examination of the ways in which men alter their gender presentations cross-situationally, this study illustrates the ways that "doing" gender is a more complicated process than we often imagine. Sexism and gender inequality are perpetuated sometimes by a reflexive subject, and often - as was the case in this research - unreflexively, through men's interactions with one another and different social settings.

Committee: Rae Blumberg (Chair), Elizabeth Gorman, Krishan Kumar, Lawrie Balfour (Politics), Michael Kimmel (SUNY Stony Brook)

Interests: Gender, Sexuality, Men and Masculinities, Family, Culture, Qualitative Methodology

Dissertation: "Relating to Distant Suffering: Meanings of Public Talk and Action in the Contemporary US Anti-Trafficking Movement"

My dissertation analyzes the US anti-human trafficking movement, which has gained a great deal of publicity and "participation" through on-line media campaigns. I argue that the movement's tactics of entrepreneurship, individualized participation, and sentimental treatment of "distant others" ultimately depoliticizes the issue, removing it from its structural conditions within global capitalism. Despite this depoliticization, there is a room for creative approaches to the message. I hypothetically attribute the origins of the varying understandings of the cause and activism to such factors as activist groups’ civic customs which are configured by a group’s understandings of its position in the larger institutional anti-trafficking field.

Committee: Jeff Olick(Chair), Krishan Kumar, Katya Makarova, Andrea Press, Bruce Williams (Media Studies)

Dissertation: "Diagnosis, SES, and Education: The Intersection of Mental Health, Inequality, and Children’s Academic Achievement"

This study uses a nationally representative sample of children to explore the social correlates and academic consequences associated with mental health problems. In particular, it examines the social process associated with the emergence of inequalities in children’s mental health status. Additionally, it outlines the influence of mental health diagnoses (e.g., ADHD and ED) on children’s math and reading gains, as well as the moderating role of socioeconomic status and mediating role of classroom quality. Results from this study suggest that social inequalities in children’s mental health diagnoses are generated during the process preceding the actual diagnosis, and are largely absent during the diagnostic evaluation. Moreover, the typical negative association between mental health problems and children’s academic achievement is most detrimental to children from the least advantaged families. These findings contribute to a growing body of literature documenting the importance of mental health in the stratifying processes of society that produce inequality.

Committee: Josipa Roksa (Chair), Paul Kingston, Allison Pugh, David Grissmer (Curry School of Education)

Interests: Children/adolescents, education, family, mental health, inequality, quantitative methodology

Dissertation: "'What Are You?' Multiracial Identity and The Persistence of Racism in a 'Post-Racial' Society"

A comparative analysis that exposes how racial identity options vary based on one’s racial makeup, and how one’s racial identity is informed by experiences and perceptions of race and racism. The project shows how “multiracial” is an increasingly valid identity while also exposing how the hegemony of the U.S. racial hierarchy differentially shapes the identities, opportunities, and networks of Black-Whites compared to Asian-Whites.

Committee: Milton Vickerman (Chair), Josipa Roksa, Allison Pugh, David Brunsma (Virginia Tech)

Interests:Race & Racism, Multiracialism, Inequality, Qualitative Methods, Intersectional Analysis, Gender, Family

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