Faculty Guide

Title

Professor of Sociology, and Women's and Gender Studies

History
Sociology
Women's and Gender Studies

Expertise

Contemporary families; historical sociology; sociology of gender, class & race/ethnicity; community studies.

Profile

Professor Karen V. Hansen combines sociology and history in her research and teaching. Her latest project, ENCOUNTER ON THE GREAT PLAINS: SCANDINAVIAN SETTERS AND THE DISPOSSESSION OF DAKOTA INDIANS, 1890-1930, has received support from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. ENCOUNTER explores life on a remote Indian reservation in the early twentieth century where Scandinavians began homesteading, with the sanction of the U.S. government. In effect, they dispossessed Dakota Sioux while living as their neighbors ON the reservation. Based on oral histories with elders and analysis of landownership records, the book explores the land taking and in its wake, the coexistence of two profoundly different peoples as they sought to maintain their language, practice their culture, and honor loyalties to more than one nation.

Professor Hansen’s scholarship also focuses on contemporary families. She authored NOT-SO-NUCLEAR FAMILIES: CLASS, GENDER, AND NETWORKS OF CARE, which received the William J. Goode Book Award, Honorable Mention, and was a finalist for the C. Wright Mills Award. Combining theoretical frameworks and rich empirical accounts, she has edited two anthologies with Anita Ilta Garey, AT THE HEART OF WORK AND FAMILY and FAMILIES IN THE U.S.

Awards and Honors

Visiting Scholar, Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, Harvard University (2013)

Fellow, Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, Harvard University (2012)

Faculty Scholar, Student-Scholar Partnership Program (2009)

John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2006)

William J. Goode Book Award, Honorable Mention, American Sociological Association, Family Section (2006)

Dean of Arts and Sciences Mentoring Award for outstanding mentoring of students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (2005)

Finalist, C.Wright Mills Award for Not-So-Nuclear Families: Class, Gender, and Networks of Care (2005)

Associate Senior Researcher, Berkeley Center for Working Families, University of California, Berkeley (1999 - 2000)

National Endowment for Humanities Fellowship (1999)

Norwegian Royal Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Emigration Fund of 1975 (1998)

Visiting Scholar, Henry A. Murray Research Center, Radcliffe College (1994 - 1996)

American Philosophical Society Grant (1992)

Marver and Sheva Bernstein Faculty Fellowship (1992 - 1993)

Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellowship in the Humanities, Harvard University (1991 - 1992)

Bunting Institute Fellow, Radcliffe College (1991 - 1992)

National Endowment for Humanities (summer) (1991)

Woodrow Wilson Research Grant in Women's Stuides (1988)

Gertrude Jaeger Prize, Most Outstanding Graduate Student Essay Written by a Woman in Sociology, University of California, Berkeley (1987 - 1988)

University of California-Berkeley Distinguished Teaching Assistant Award (1984 - 1985)

Courses Taught

AMST/SOC	125a	History of United States Feminisms
GSAS	302d	Interdisciplinary Dissertation Seminar
SOC	130a	Families, Caregiving and Kinship
SOC	131b	Biography, Gender, and Society
SOC	132b	Social Perspectives on Motherhood and Mothering
SOC	199b	Senior Capstone Seminar: Sociology in the World
SOC	206b	Advanced Topics in Family Studies
SOC	210b	Gender, Class, and Race

Scholarship

Hansen, Karen V. Encounter on the Great Plains: Scandinavian Settlers and the Dispossession of Dakota Indians, 1890-1930. New York: Oxford University Press, 2013. (forthcoming)

Hansen, Karen V.. "Breaching Boundaries and Dowsing for Stories on the Great Plains." Open to Disruption: Time and Craft in the Practice of Slow Sociology. Ed. Rosanna Hertz, Margaret K. Nelson, and Anita Garey. Nashville, TN: Vanderbilt University Press, 2013 (forthcoming)

Anita Ilta Garey and Karen V. Hansen. "Introduction: An Eye on Emotion in the Study of Families and Work." At the Heart of Work and Family: Engaging the Ideas of Arlie Hochschild. Ed. Anita Ilta Garey and Karen V. Hansen. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011. 1-14.

Hansen, Karen V. "Land Taking at Spirit Lake: The Competing and Converging Logics of Norwegian and Dakota Women, 1900-1930." Norwegian-American Women: Migration, Communities, and Identities. Ed. Betty Berglund and Lori Ann Lahlum. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2011. 211-245.

Hansen, Karen V. "The Asking Rules of Reciprocity." At the Heart of Work and Family: Engaging the Ideas of Arlie Hochschild. Ed. Anita Ilta Garey and Karen V. Hansen. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011. 112-123.

Hansen, Karen V. and Ken Chih-Yan Sun. "Localizing Transnational Norwegians: Exploring Nationalism, Language, and Labor Markets in Early Twentieth-Century North Dakota." Norwegian-American Essays, 2011 13. (2011): 73-107.

Hansen, Karen V., co-ed. Anita Ilta Garey, ed. At the Heart of Work and Family: Engaging the Ideas of Arlie Hochschild. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011.

Hansen, Karen V. "The Powers of Parental Observation: Constructing Networks of Care." Who's Watching? Daily Practices of Surveillance Among Contemporary Families. Ed. Margaret K. Nelson and Anita Ilta Garey. Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2009. 175-191.

Hansen, Karen V. and Mignon Duffy. "Mapping the Dispossession: Scandinavian Homesteading at Fort Totten, 1900-1930." Great Plains Research 18. Spring (2008): 67-80.

Hansen, Karen V. Not-So-Nuclear Families: Class, Gender, and Networks of Care. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2005.

Hansen, Karen V. "The Asking Rules of Reciprocity in Networks of Care for Children." Qualitative Sociology 12. 4 (2004): 421-437.

Hansen, Karen V., co-ed. Anita Garey. Families in the U.S.: Kinship and Domestic Politics. Temple University Press, 1998.

Hansen, Karen V. "‘No Kisses Is Like Youres’: An Erotic Friendship between African-American Women During the Mid-Nineteenth Century." Gender and History 7. 2 (1995): 153-182.

Hansen, Karen V. A Very Social Time: Crafting Community in Antebellum New England. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994.

Hansen, Karen V., co-ed. Ilene Philpson. Women, Class and the Feminist Imagination: A Socialist-Feminist Reader. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1990.