Notes from the Chair
Three Postdoctoral Fellows in the Department
Visiting Instructors
Maury Stein's Retirement Celebration
Where I Learned to Think
Colloquia & Guest Speakers '99 - '00
Faculty Notes
University-wide Awards
News from Department PhDs
New PhDs
New Jobs
New MAs
Incoming Class of 2000
Undergraduate Honors Thesis Symposium
Undergrad Notes of Interest
In last summer's newsletter we announced that this was Maury's last year teaching. To paraphrase that great sociological thinker, Mark Twain, the rumors of his demise were exaggerated. But this year will be Maury's last year as a full-time member of our department, after 46 years at Brandeis (minus a couple of years away at Cal Arts testing out the Disney California environs). Maury's contributions to the department over the years are incalculable, and this coming April we will celebrate Maury as he approaches retirement. We invite all of his former students to join us in this celebration next April (see below).
Members of the Sociology Department received an extraordinary number of university-wide awards this year, signs of the varied and vital contributions of department members. See note below for specifics, but congratulations to all.
In terms of national department recognition, there is nothing like the Tuesday's with Morrie phenomenon. I would venture to say that all of us has met a person (probably more than once) who, after finding out that we were in the Brandeis Sociology Department, asked "Did you know Morrie?" The book has now sold over three million copies in hardback. Compare this to Street Corner Society, one of sociology's all-time best selling books, which sold 270,000 copies over nearly half a century. The popularity of Tuesday's with Morrie is an incredible cultural happening (and probably worthy of sociological analysis).
Our revised and improved website is now fully operational. I would encourage all of you to visit it. It contains information about the Department, the faculty, the graduate program, recent events, and course offerings. There is in it a mechanism by which you can contact us. This would be an easy way to send us newsletter information. To get to the website: go to www.brandeis.edu, click on academic departments, click on sociology and you should be there.
As I approach my eighth year as chair, I believe the Department is moving along well and continuing the traditions of innovation and excellence that have thrived here over the past forty years. And if you happen to be coming through Waltham, stop by Pearlman and say hello. Short of that, send us notes for the newsletter.
-Peter
Three Postdoctoral Fellows in the Department
Susan Markens is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow, joint with the Anthropology Department. Susan received her undergraduate degree in sociology from our department and her Ph.D. in sociology from UCLA. Susan's interests are in gender and medical sociology. Her research interests include the politics of reproduction and the impact of the new genetics. She taught one course each semester, in addition to continuing her research on ethnicity and decisions around genetics. This coming January Susan will begin a tenure track appointment in the Department of Sociology at Temple University.
Annika Lillrank is a postdoctoral fellow from Finland supported by the Fulbright Foundation. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Helsinki and her major interests are in medical sociology. She is revising some of her dissertation work on families of children with cancer and continuing some of her new research on narrative of chronic pain.
This year we will have a third postdoctoral fellow. Lakshmi Srinivas received her PhD in sociology from UCLA and will be a Consiliance postdoctoral Fellow for academic year 2000-2001. Lakshmi's research is on film and its audiences, and she is currently studying Indian film culture in the Boston area. She will teach a course in "Families" is the Fall and "Sociology of Film" in the Spring.
Dr. Robert Irwin will teach "Theories of Social Psychology" in the Fall. Professor Irwin received his Ph.D. in Sociology from our department (199 ) and has been teaching in the Peace and Conflict Studies Program.
Professor Marty Krauss, Director of the Starr Center for Mental Retardation in the Heller School, has accepted a joint appointment with our department. She will teach "Sociology of Disability" in the Spring semester.
Save this date: Saturday, March 31, 2001. The event will begin in the morning and include lunch. If you want to be put on a list to receive further information when it becomes available, e-mail Elaine Brooks at brooks@brandeis.edu.
Maury Stein's Retirement Celebration
We want to invite anyone who was touched by Maury's teaching of courses either as student section leaders, teaching assistants, or co-teachers, to come and participate in this event. Friends and admirers are welcome as well.
Although I never would have admitted it at the time, I learned to think while a graduate student at Brandeis. By this I mean I learned to think independently, to generate ideas, to research them, to write about them: to become an independent scholar.
I was warned that this might happen. In the spring of 1990, while making what then was the biggest decision of my life (i.e. where to attend graduate school), I met with a distinguished Alumna from Brandeis Sociology. She was quite forthright with me. She told me that if I wanted to learn what to think -- that is, to be trained, to subject my mind to the discipline of Sociology, as it were, -- then I should go elsewhere. Brandeis Sociology was not for those seeking minute direction or a structured inculcation into the canons of sociological thought. It was not for those who needed someone else to steer their ship. If, on the other hand, she said, I wanted to learn how to think -- how to create and follow my own research agenda -- if I already had a sense of what interested me and what was sociological about it, then Brandeis would be the place for me. At the time, I thought she was odd. I did not understand the difference between learning what to think and learning how to think, but I soon would.
I learned the very next semester, as it turned out, in Egon Bittner's famed Classical Theory seminar. If there were ever a rite of passage for fledgling graduate students, this was it. I recall we were so intimidated by him that we met for an hour or so in advance of the class to "discuss the texts." Truth be told, we were really discussing Egon, how to read his mind, how to figure out what the devil he wanted from us, and how to deliver it. We failed, and failed miserably. Each week he looked at us with increasing pity and frustration. Each week we struggled more mightily to tell him what we thought he wanted to hear - to give the 'right' answer. Of course we failed, because we were going at it all wrong from the start. He didn't want us to tell him what he thought (presumably he already knew that). He wanted us to tell him what we thought. Until we could grasp this simple notion, we were doomed to speaking at cross-purposes. Only when we began to develop our own ideas could we begin to have a real dialogue, which I suspect he longed for but never received.
The following semester, I had a second epiphany. I went to speak with Carmen Sirianni about a paper I had written. We talked for two hours, (a precedent I'm sure he later regretted having established). What struck me was not so much the time he spent with me, although I was acutely aware of that. In typical insecure graduate student fashion, I worried I was boring him; I wondered if he had expected me to leave earlier, but lacked the wherewithal to say so; I wondered if this long meeting were just some lengthy perambulation leading to my eventual dismissal from the program - my work was not up to snuff, and he lacked the heart to tell me. In the midst of these paranoid ramblings, however, I noticed something.
He took my ideas seriously. Seriously enough, in fact, to argue with me about them. Our argument did not take the typical shape of faculty member directing an uninformed graduate student of the error in her ways and bringing her more in line with mainstream Sociology: how does this fit into the existing literature? Are your hypotheses testable? How are you going to operationalize the concepts? Instead, he engaged with my ideas as I had articulated them, and argued with me. Point by point. And I argued back. This would be the first of many fruitful arguments between us. As always, I defended my ideas the best I could. Sometimes I refused to budge; other times, I came around to his way of thinking. The critical point in all of this, though, is that to argue with someone about their ideas requires taking those ideas seriously. For the first time, I had produced thoughts, research, and scholarly conjecture that merited heated discussion.
I would have many epiphanies in the years that followed. I came to understand the value of learning from my peers. And I had some splendid peers. I participated in an ongoing writing group that saw me through to the end of my dissertation. Members of the Brandeis Sociology cohort moved through it over time: Amy Agigian, Neil Charney, Will Brooke de Bock, Betsy Hayes, Faith Ferguson, Jean Elson, and Henry Rubin. We read each other's work with seriousness and gusto. We argued. We cheered each other on. Most importantly, we respected on another's ideas.
I also benefited from a strong feminist mentor in Karen Hansen. Feminist, because she taught me by example, not by imposition. Over the years as I worked with her as a student, a teaching assistant, a research assistant, a dissertation advisee, and finally as a collaborator, I learned by watching how she thought and worked. I learned the most, I think, during our numerous informal interactions. I learned through our long discussions en route to some dank archive to gather data for her book; I learned while huffing along in an attempt to keep up with her long stride during our morning 'power walks;' I learned from her thoughtful comments on my written work delivered over our post-power walk poppy-seed muffins and Peet's coffee. It was during these moments that we had some of our most fruitful exchanges and I came to appreciate the value of a patient yet critical ear. I still turn to her with the draft of one thing or another, knowing that she will see through the fog of my ramblings to the core of my ideas.
Of course, the independence of mind cultivated at Brandeis could be said to have its downside. It could be argued that some people ought not be encouraged to think for themselves: the results may be banal, frightening, or both. Similarly, I suspect that the radical independence towards which many of us strove drove some of our seminar leaders to distraction; graduate courses verging on anarchy, each of us asserting our own point of view as if our lives depended on it. To some degree, they did. Toward the end of my career at Brandeis, a faculty member told me somewhat accusingly, "You don't want mentors, you want colleagues." This was meant to convey, I suspect, some fatal flaw in my character, and it probably did.
This statement also conveyed, however, a fundamental strength in the graduate program in Sociology at Brandeis: it produces scholars who can think for themselves, who want to think for themselves, and in so doing push the limits of conventional Sociology. For proof of this, I need only return to my conversation with the distinguished Alumna. She, like so many others who have gone before me, made Sociology better by thinking outside of its boundaries. This legacy of pioneering scholars motivates us who follow them, and serves as a beacon for what we might accomplish. It is living proof of the rightness of thinking for oneself.
(NOTE: This was originally written for a Brandeis 50th Anniversary booklet that was never compiled.)
Colloquia & Guest Speakers '99 - '00
Professor Margaret Lock, McGill University
"On Dying Twice: Culture, Technology and the New Death in Japan and North America"
Professor William Gamson, Boston College
Abortion in the Public Discourse in the U.S. and Germany"
Anne Wheelock, Fairtest
"High Stakes Testing: Impact on Schools and Students of Color"
Professor Eliane Riska, Ado Acadami Univeristy (Finland)
"Women in Medicine"
Sir Courtney Blackman, Ambassador to U.S. from Barbados
"U.S. Caribbean Relations: Whither?"
Professor Robbie Kahn (1988), University of Vermont
"The Millennium: Perspectives from the Culture of the Just Born"
David Cunningham
...published "The Dyamics of Repression: The FBI's COINTELPRO Against the New Left" in J. Soldstone (ed.) States, Parties and Social Movements (2000) and has revised his dissertation "Organized Repression and Movement Collapse in a Modern Democratic State" for publication.
From Gordie Fellman:
..."I published 'Enemy, Concept and Identity of,' in Les Kurtz, ed., Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict, Vol. 1, Academic Press, 1999.
I also fell in love last spring and was married (!) last October. I am finding all the cliches about the transformative powers of love to be true. The name of the woman is Pamela Blau. In addition to being smart, playful, alive, versatile, fun, attractive, etc., etc., etc., she is a violinist and violist and a Jungian analyst. When one says that latter profession out loud, it is always heard as a "union analyst," and people quite properly wonder what that is, how does one analyze a union. I don't know, but I am learning a lot about archetypes. Turns out the Freudian and the Jungian have little to quarrel about. Pamela lived in Europe for 20 years, playing in the Netherlands Ballet Orchestra for 17 years and studying at the Jung Institute in Zurich for 3. Happily, she returned to this country a couple of years ago, and we met at the art opening of a mutual friend April last year.
I have been wondering a lot lately where love is in liberal arts education, to say nothing of graduate education and peace studies, a field I am increasingly engaged in. We did a sort of workshop on "Where does love fit into peace studies?" at a Peace Studies Association conference last March. It was a start into an inquiry I/we expect will go on."
Karen V. Hansen
...has spent the past year at the Center for Working Families at The University of California, Berkeley. In the company of many fine scholars (including alum Barrie Thorne [ ], co-director of the Center along with Arlie Hochschild), she attended the Center's weekly colloquia and launched a study of "Networks of Care for Children." After completing forty in-depth interviews with members of four networks, she presented preliminary findings in a workship at the Center in the Sociology Department at Berkeley, and in a colloquium at U.C. Davis, exploring issues of gender, class contingencies, and the meaning of kinship.
Karen will return to teaching at Brandeis in January 2001. In the interim, she will use her NEH fellowship to work on her book about the land conflict between Scandinavian immigrants and the Dakota Sioux in early twentieth century North dakota. She presented a paper on the shift in land ownership patterns on the Devils Lake Sioux Indian Reservation, 1900-1930, at an international conference on Norwegian immigration to the U.S., hosted by the Minnesota Historical Society. And she published her first article from the research this last year: "Historical Sociology and the Prism of Biography: Lillian Wineman and the Trade in Dakota Beadwork, 1893-1929," Qualitative Sociology 22:4 (Winter 1999); 353-368.
Gila Hayim
...chaired two sessions and presented a paper, "Self-thematization in the Complex Systems of Modernity" at the 34th International Congress of the ISS in Tel Aviv, Israel.
Jo Anne Preston
...published "Occupational Segregation by Gender: Trens and Explanations" (Quarterly Journal of Economics and Finance, December 1999) and "Reading Teachers' Mail: Using Correspondence to Reconstruct the Nineteenth-Century Classroom" (in M. Laun and K. Rousmanier, Silences and Images: The Social History of the Classroom, 1999).
From Shula Reinharz:
..."This is the third year since I created the Hadassah International Research
Institute on Jewish Women. This year we published two books and held three conferences: one on New Frontiers in Jewish Women's Studies (in New York), one on Gender & Adult Jewish Education in 12 different countries (at Brandeis) and the same topic in the U.S. (also at Brandeis). In addition to launching our book series (Brandeis Series on Jewish Women - UPNE); a new academic journal (co-published in Jerusalem, entitled Nashim); and producing a regular set of Working Papers, we have also produced popular educational items such as a calendar consisting of photographs and information about Jewish women around the world. This June the HIRIJW staff will travel to England to study the way British Jewish women are responding to the extraordinary demographic decline (400,000-300,000 in one generation). Throughout the year, I have been giving talks on the research the Institute has been doing. Anyone who would like to receive our mailings should let me know (reinharz@brandeis.edu). The big news is that I have created a Brandeis University Women's Studies Research Center that will open in a newly renovated space (10,000 square feet) in the Epstein Building on November 12, 2000. You are all invited to come celebrate."
George Ross
...became Director of the Center for German and European Studies at Brandeis in the fall of 1999, while continuing on as Director of the European Union Center at Harvard. This, plus teaching five courses, commuting back and forth to Montreal and skiing, made for a strenuous year. Perhaps too strenuous!
His book, The Brave New World of European Labor, with Andrew Martin and a large research team, appeared in the fall of 1999 as well (Berghahn, Oxford and New York). He looks forward to another hectic, but creative, year, building the German and European Studies Center, a much too significant birthday this summer, and buying a new pair of skis.
Carmen Sirianni
... completed his book with Lewis Friedland ('85) entitled Civic Innovation in America: Community Empowerment, Public Policy, and the Movement for Civic Renewal. It will be published next spring by the University of California Press. This book is based on extensive fieldwork, action research, and over four hundred interviews with innovative practitioners in a variety of arenas (community organizing and development, civic environmentalism, healthy communities, civic journalism). It makes a case for substantial innovation over the past several decades, despite general indicators of civic disengagement, and examines innovation in the context of "public policy for democracy." In the concluding chapter, Sirianni and Friedland present the first scholarly analysis of the emergence of a "civic renewal movement" over the past decade.
Sirianni and Friedland are working on several projects together to extend the research of the book. One is a study for the Kettering Foundation on building the civic renewal movement, and is designed for organizers and practitioners. A second project is for the Pew Charitable Trusts on mapping the organizational fields of youth leadership for civic renewal and the intersection of youth development and community development, utilizing formal network analysis as well as practitioner action conferences. And a third is for the Ford Foundation exploring the development of a national electronic "community information commons," which was the subject of a conference that they collaborated on at the Wingspread Conference Center earlier this year.
And despite all this collaborative work, they still remain good friends! Indeed, Carmen's son David, now nine years old, was seen to be reading the Hebrew at Lew's son Sammy's bar mitzvah this past April, and then announced that he wanted to be Jewish too!
Stefan Timmermans
...is a new father. He and Ruth Baxter had a daughter born, Merel, June 1, 2000 (Judy Hanley is godmother). He also received a Bernstein Fellowship, which will give him the Fall semester off to change diapers and pursue his new ethnographic study of death investigations of medical examiners. His book, Sudden Death and the Myth of CPR, was a finalist for the C. Wright Mills Award (for more information go to www.brandeis.edu/news/cpr.html). He has also published several articles and chapters: "The Redemption of Thalidomide: Standardizing Risk and Responsibility." Social Studies of Science, Vol 30 (1), pp. 41-72 (with Valerie Leiter); "Orders and their Others: On the Constitution of Universalities in Medical Work." Configurations, Vol. 8 (1), pp. 31-61; and
"Technology and Medical Practice," in: Bird, C., P. Conrad, and A. Fremont (Eds.), Handbook of Medical Sociology (Fifth edition), Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, NJ, pp. 309-321.
Dessima M. Williams
...was honored with several awards this year. She received the Curry College Human Rights award at its honors night, May 4, 2000. Williams was also one of 12 women in Massachusetts named into the Academy of Women Achievers of the Boston YWCA. This recognizes "women who have demonstrated leadership and reached exemplary levels of achievement in their professions and communities." Also honored were Evelyn Broks Higgenbotham, Professor of History at Harvard University, Doris Kearns Goodwin, historian, commentator and Pulitzer Prize winner and Maria Lopez, Massachusetts Superior Court Judge.
Dessima is one of ten advisors worldwide to "Women Go Global," a United Nations CDRom for "Women 2000," a retrospective on 50 years of the United Nations and Women. She prepared three pieces of the CDRom: "Dame Nita Barrow: Profile of a Leader;" "Angela King: The Face of the United Nations for Women of the World;" and Peggy Antrobus: The Voice of Grassroots Women's Analyses and Empowerment."
Professor emeritus Kurt H. Wolff has published a German edition of Survival and Sociology (1998; Suhrkamp) and a Japanese edition of Transformation in the Writing (2000; Marge), as well as papers in Philosophy and Social Criticism (1998), Cultural Studies (1999), La Critica Sociologica (1999), Simmel Newsletter (1999), and 1996 Jahrbuch fur Soziologiegeschichte (2000). He would enjoy hearing from his former students, colleagues, and other friends: 2300 Washington Street, Apt. 327, Newton, MA 02462-1451; phone (617) 244-8323.
Beverly Woodward...
research associate, published "Challenges to Human Subject Protections in US Medical Research" in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Nov. 24, 1999.
Beverly continues her work on medical privacy issues. In September she
will present an invited paper, "Confidentiality and Consent," as part of
the Thomas A. Pitts Memorial Lectureship at the Medical University of South Carolina. Later that month she will speak at a conference on "Health Information Privacy" in Ottawa, Ontario.
Graham Cassano (1991) currently resides in Hamden, Ct. In the past few years he has written several novels, though has not yet attempted to publish anything. He also spends days caring for his 3-year old daughter, Bia, and studying jazz theory and playing the chromatic harmonica in a swing band.
C.J. Churchill (2000) is working on a Brandeis research project with Sylvia Fishman and Len Saxe (NEJS/CMJS). He has been appointed as a visiting assistant professor at Williams College for the fall and he has received a tenure-track appointment at St. Thomas Aquinas College to begin in January 2001.
Patricia Hill Collins (1984) has been named the Charles Phelps Taft Professor at the University of Cincinnati.
Murray S. Davis (1968) published "Aphorisms and Cliches: The Generation and Dissipation of Charisma" in The Annual Review of Sociology, 1999.
Mindy Fried (1996) is the Director and Co-principal Investigator for a national study on flexible work policies (e.g. flextime, telecommuting) at Boston College Center for Work and Family. Between that study -- and her book Taking Time: Parental Leave Policy and Corporate Culture (Temple University Press) she has been giving a lot of conference presentations and has been widely quoted in the news media, mostly on family leave issues.
John Grady (1977) of Wheaton College has been appointed the Hannah J. Goldberg Chair of Sociology, which was endowed in the name of the recently retired provost, who also graduated Brandeis in the 50s.
Janet Kahn (1994) is a practicing massage therapist and peace educator. She works in a multi-modality healing center in Takoma Park, MD and consults on massage-related research, principly at the Center for Alternative Medicine Research at Beth Israel-Deaconess in Boston. Last August she was appointed by Donna Shalala for a 4-year term in the NIH Advisory Council on Complementary and Alternative Medicine. She is currently serving as President of the American Massage Therapy Association Foundation. She also holds a part-time appointment at the Wellesley Center for Research on Women, where her principal project was the just-released guide for middle-school teachers called "Shaping a Better World: Global Issues/Gender Issues." This multi-media package is available from the Wellesley Center for Women.
Robbie Kahn, (1988) Associate Professor of Sociology at University of Vermont, published an article in the January/February 2000 issue of Tikkun magazine called "The Culture of the Just Born." The issue is devoted to "prophetic"voices on the millennium.
Ruth Linden (198?) is Director of Curricular Reform at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is working on a book on the biopolitics of breast cancer. She has been invited to give a series of lectures and workshops in April 2001 at the Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Her recent publications include: "Deportations and Discursive Displacements." Sociological Research Online 4:2 (Summer 1999); and "The Other Diana" NWSA Journal, special issue on "Woman Created, Woman Transfigured, Woman Consumed" 11:2 (Summer 1999).
Cameron Macdonald (1998) is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Connecticut. During the 2000-01 academic year, she will be a Bunting Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University where she will complete her book, Shadow Mothers: Nannies, Au Pairs, and the Social Construction of Mothering, forthcoming with University of California Press. She will also begin research on her next project, a study of how working families dealing with chronic illness address the care gaps created by the continuing off loading of medical care from professionals to family members.
Karl Pillemer (1985) and family continue to do well in Ithaca, New York. Karl's book (with several other Cornell faculty), Social Integration in the Second Half of Life, will be published by the Johns Hopkins University Press this fall. The book looks at the related themes of social networks, social support, and multiple roles in the lives of people in late midlife and beyond. Karl has also co-founded a network of mainly scholars (with Prof. Kurt Luescher, at the University of Konstanz, Germany), devoted to developing new approaches to the study of parent-child relations in later life. A special focus of this network (funded by the Transcoop Program of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation) is on researching ambivalence in parent - adult child relationships (an interest that stems from his Brandeis days). Karl's wife Clare just successfully defended her Ph.D. in German Studies at Cornell, and daughter Hannah will be attending Clark University in Worcester in the fall. (Karl notes that she STILL has the baby blanket the department gave her 18 years ago!) After many years as an instructor at Harvard University's interdisciplinary program in Social Studies, Henry Rubin (1996) will be visiting as an Assistant Professor at Clark University in Worcester, MA. hrubin@clarku.edu. He will be teaching a classical theory sequence and courses in culture, media, and gender studies. The manuscript for his book on masculinity, embodiment and intersubjective recognition (Self Made Men, University of Chicago Press) should be finished by the time this newsletter is in print. He would also like to announce that he is getting married to Ms. Elizabeth C. Penland in November.
Charles W. Smith (1966 - the first year PhDs were awarded) Professor and Chair of Sociology at the Queens College, CUNY, writes of how happy he is to have Victoria Pitts (1999) join the Sociology Department. This brings the number of Brandeis Graduates - BAs and PhDs - back to four, the other two being Sam Heilman and Harry Levine who majored in sociology as undergraduates. His most recent book, Success and Survival on Wall Street: Understanding the Mind of the Market (Rowman and Littlefield) hit the book stores in late August. His forthcoming book, tentatively entitled Pitfalls and Promises of Marketization in American Higher Education (Rowman and Littlefield) is due out in March. In his spare time he continues to edit - his 15th year - the Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior for Basil Blackwell and welcomes submissions from all those theoretically sophisticated Brandeis sociologists.
Robert S. Smith (1992)published "Contested Memory: Notes on Robert K. Merton's 'The Thomas Theorum and the Matthew Effect'" in the American Sociologist, Summer 1999, pp. 62-77.
Jerry Starr (1970)has taken a leave of absence from West Virginia University to become executive director of Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting (CIPB). The mission of CIPB is to promote restructuring of the public broadcasting service as an independent public trust with permanent, insulated funding from the commercial broadcasting industry and to empower community groups to democratize their local stations. CIPB is subsidized by the Florence and John Schumann Foundation (Bill Moyers, President) and George Soros' Open Society Institute (multiple Emmy Award winning public broadcaster Jack Willis is Senior Fellow). Jerry's book The War Over Public Broadcasting is scheduled to be published by Beacon in Spring 2000. If you want to support this effort, contact Jerry at: CIPB, 1029 Vermont Avenue, NW, Suite 800, Washington, DC 20005; (202) 638-6880; fax (202) 638-6885.
Ella Taylor (1985)is a film critic for LA Weekly, a film columnist for Atlantic Monthly and co-host on KPCC-Radio's weekly "Film Talk." She received second place from the greater Los Angeles Press Club entertainment reviews and has adopted a little girl, Maya Rose, from China.
Farzin Vahdat (1998)had a postdoctoral fellowship at Center for Middle Eastern Studies at Harvard since last year and it has been renewed for next year. He has published a few articles on Iran and modernity from a critical theory perspective and is continuing his work on Iran's intellectual encounter with modernity.
Greg Wilpert (1994)has been teaching at the New School in New York and working for a small magazine called Commonweal. Greg has been awarded a Fulbright Research and Lecturing grant to go to Caracas, Venezuela this coming fall.
Elizabeth Anne Wood (1999) has a new position as assistant professor, (full time, tenure track) at Nassau Community College, Garden City, New York (Long Island). Beth has published "Working in the Fantasy Factory: The 'Attention' Hypothesis' and the Enacting of 'Masculine Power' in Strip Clubs." The Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 29, Nol 1 and "Strip Club Dancers: Working in the Fantasy Factory," in Alex Thio and Thomas Calhoun (eds.), Readings in Deviant Behavior, 2nd Edition, Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001. She and her partner Will are moving onto a 37' Owens Motor Yacht built in the 60s for their first year in New York. They hope to be anchored in Port Washington. Anyone visiting or living in the area is welcome aboard!
Christa Kelleher is presenting at the August Carework Conference in Washington, D.C. She is co-authoring a paper with Bonnie Fox from the University of Toronto entitled, "Changing Diapers, Changing Men? Women's Constructions of Fathers' Roles in Newborn Care." She will teach a course in spring on Women in Politics - a joint offering in the departments of Politics and Women's Studies.
John Kelly presented a paper, "'It Could Have Been Worse': Quadriplegic Rugby Athletes and The Ideology of Ability," at the 2000 meetings of the Society for Disability Studies. The title got him invited on "On a Roll" Radio, a disability-themed talk show. He also published an op-ed piece in the Boston Globe on the 10th anniversary of the ADA: "Rights of the Disabled are Rights like any Others." July 30, 2000. He had written an earlier op-ed for the Globe comparing Jack Kevorkian to Christopher Reeve which ran 3/10/98. He also has an article forthcoming, "The Disabled Need Assistance, Not an Escape" in an anthology Disability and Postmodernity.
Kati Kriz moved to southern Germany last fall and then to London in the spring to conduct interviews with parents of young children for her dissertation. She received a scholarship from a German university and two project grants from the Brandeis Center for German and European Studies to carry out her fieldwork in Germany. She got the Vibert Douglas International Fellowship of the International Federation of University Women and a Swedish Institute research grant to conduct research for her dissertaion in Britain and Sweden. With Christa Kelleher, she put together a list of references on feminist critiques of pornography, which was published in an anthology on feminist analyses of pornography by Drucilla Cornell this year. She presented a paper on emotional labor at the British Sociological Association in April 2000, and will shape the childcare strategies of parents from different socio-economic backgrounds at the SSSP meetings, the care work conference and the APSA meetings in Washington, DC this year. She will be moving to Stockholm in the fall to continue interviewing there.
Debi Osnowitz continues field work on her dissertation, which compares contract workers in the computer and publishing industries. She presented aspects of her research at SSSP, ASA, and the Berkeley Center conference on work and family during the past year. Her paper "Out of House, Out of Mind: The Negotiated Work of Editorial Freelancing: will appear in the next edition of Current Research in Occupations and Professions.
Deborah Potter presented several papers at professional meetings: "Risky Business: Interagency Strategies Used by Public Agencies Serving Aggressive Youth with Mental Health Problems" at the American Sociological Association, August 2000; "'Acting Up' and 'Acting Out': 'Conduct Disorder' and The Medicalization of Adolescent Aggressive Behaviors" at the Society for the Study of Social Problems, August 2000; "From Hyperactive Children to ADHD Adults: Some Observations on the Expansion of Medical Categories" at the Society for the Study of Social Problems, August 2000 (with Peter Conrad) and "Cross-Social Movement Activity in the Peace and Feminist Movements: Barbara Deming's Resignation from Liberation Magazine" at the Peace History Society, April 2000.
Jean Elson
"Am I Still a Woman?: An Analysis of Gynecological Surgery and Gender Identity"
Mary E. Godwyn
"Is Sociological Theory Useful in Cases of Extreme Inequality?"
Tina Lynn Taylor
"Living Digitally: Embodiment in Virtual Environments"
Blaine Anton Vogt
"Border Fish: Salmon Crises, Environmental Imaginaries, and Politics of Sustainability"
Mary Godwyn
In Fall 2000 Mary begins a tenure track job with the rank of Assistant Professor at Lasell College, Newton, MA. She will also be teaching at Babson College.
Tina Taylor
In Fall 2000 Tina begins a tenure track job as an Assistant Professor at North Carolina State University (Department of Communications).
Tony Vogt
In Fall 2000 Tony with be a Lecturer at Oregon State University in Corvallis, OR.
* Elizabeth Gay
* Heidi Kruckenberg
Anastasia Norton
B.A. in culture and geography (1994) from Gustavus Adolphus College. She is interested in sustainable development and community.
Laura Regis
B.A. in 1998 from the College of the Holy Cross where she majored in sociology and economics. Laura's area of interest is social problems.
Joint M.A. Program, Sociology & Women's Studies
Andrea Booth
B.S. from Montana State University (1998) in Liberal Studies. Her areas of interest include feminist theory, women's sexuality, and sexual violence.
Christina Cincotti
B.A. from University of Massachusetts at Amherst (1997) where she majored in Women's Studies. Her current areas of interest are history and current issues, and activism.
Undergraduate Honors Thesis Symposium
Carol Allman
"Tourette Syndrome: A Study of Patient Experiences to Examine How Diagnosis and Comorbidity Effect Life Satisfaction"
Rebecca Chandler
"Japanese Social Support Networks in Boston"
Jodi Dienstag
"Feminism and the Modern Orthodox Woman"
Erica George
"The Role of Mentorship in the Intergenerational Development & Continuity of Activism"
Jason Horst
"Progressive Education as a Strategy for Social Change"
Shoshana Iten
"How Art Translates into Social Change: A Case Study of 'Ad Busters' Magazine"
Matthew Kaliner
"A Critical Analysis of Mannheim & Bourdieu's Sociology of Intellectuals"
Alana Levy
"A Child's Experience of a Parent's Illness: A Sociological Perspective"
Devika Mahadevan
"Empowerment at the Grassroots: Women's Collectives in Bombay City"
Sean McKee
"The South End: Urban Renewal, Gentrification & Diversity in a Boston Neighborhood" (for both Sociology & History)
David Salama
"Graduate Medical Education: The New Rite of Passage in the Wake of Managed Care"
Peter Sallade
"The Conflict & Convergence of Modern Mass-Media and Religion"
Michael Stepansky
"Hate Crime and the Normality of Dehumanization"
Elizabeth Tockman
"Will the Current Political Peace Initiatives Lead to a Solution in the Cypriot Conflict? - From a Sociological Perspective"
Phi Beta Kappa's Mu Chapter of Massachusetts has inducted the following sociology concentrators this year: