| Department of Sociology |
| UW- Madison |
FacultyJane Collins has a joint appointment in Rural Sociology and Women's Studies and teaches in both programs. Her research focuses on gender and labor process issues. She has conducted field research on women's work in agriculture (Peru, Brazil), the textile and apparel industries (U.S., Mexico) and has written about unwaged or domestic work. Aimée Dechter John DeLamater is a social psychologist whose interests include relationships and sexuality, and gender as a key component of both. He has conducted research on adolescent and young adult sexuality, interpersonal influences on contraceptive use, and the development and dissolution of relationships. His current project is focused on the effects of life course transitions on intimate relationships, sexual attitudes and sexual behavior. He has published articles on the effects of the birth of the first child, being in a dual-career couple, and divorce/dissolution of a relationship. He is currently analyzing data on the impact of aging on sexual intimacy. Felix Elwert Christina Ewig has a joint appointment in Gender and Women’s Studies and Political Science. Her research focuses on gender and politics and social policy in Latin America. She has conducted field research in Nicaragua, Peru, Chile, Mexico, and Colombia. Myra Marx Ferree is interested in the many dimensions of gender and power. Her current interests are especially in transnational women's organizing, the women's movements of the U.S. and Germany, and gender implications of citizenship relations that are local, national and transnational at the same time. She has been looking at the historical transformations of postwar German feminism, a distinctively non-liberal type, at transnational politics and on cross- national differences in gender equity strategies. One strategy that seems especially widespread right now is "gender mainstreaming" using people designated as "gender experts" to train policy-makers around the world to be more gender-aware. The Research Circle TARGET (transnational applied research in gender equity training) which she runs with Christina Ewig (Political Science) is designed to examine this social construction and marketing of "gender expertise." She also directs the Center for German and European Studies and is affiliated faculty for the Women's Studies Program. Joan Fujimura teaches courses in social studies of science. Her Gender, Science, and Technology course examines different perspectives in the study of gender and science. Topics include the historical and contemporary studies of technoscientific and medical constructions of sex/gender differences; the impact of gender (and race) on scientific and biomedical productions; feminist critiques of scientific theories and methods; feminist proposals of new epistemologies; the work (and lack of work) of women in science; and recent theories and debates on feminist epistemologies. Sara Goldrick-Rab Pamela Herd is Assistant Professor of Public Affairs and Sociology. Her research examines the effects of Medicare and Social Security on gender, race, and class, and the relationship between socioeconomic status and health. Herd is working on a book titled Retrenching Welfare, Entrenching Equality: Health and Income Support Policies for Older Americans, to be published as part of the American Sociological Associations Rose Series on Public Policy. She is co-author of numerous articles and chapters that have appeared in Social Forces, Gender and Society, and The Gerontologist. Her most recent book, "Market Friendly or Family Friendly? The State and Gender Inequality in Old Age," co-authored with Madonna Harrington-Meyer, was published in 2007. Cameron Macdonald studies the intersections of Gender, Work, and Family by studying the gendered work of families. Her primary interest is in Care Work, the paid and unpaid labor to care for children, the sick, and the elderly, with a particular interest in that care that lies at the blurry boundaries of paid and unpaid work, of labor and of labors of love. To that end, she is currently completing Shadow Mothers: Nannies, au pairs, and the social construction of mothering which explores how working mothers and their childcare workers negotiate the division of labor between them. Her next research project, The Home as Hospital, will explore another intersection of public and private care work: the work of families providing high-tech healthcare in their homes, their challenges, and their relations with professional health care providers. Pamela Oliver Jane Piliavin is interested in gender and sports, gender and helping behavior, biology and social psychology. Mary Louise Roberts, History Gay Seidman has done research on social movements -- especially labor and women's movements -- in several different countries, including South Africa, Brazil, Zimbabwe and Guatemala. Among other work, she has written a series of articles about the South African women's movement, and about how gender issues have been built into South Africa's new democratic state. Christine Schwartz studies the relationship between union formation and dissolution patterns and social inequality. In particular, she is interested in gendered patterns of partner selection and how changes in men’s and women’s education have affected marriage, cohabitation, and the dissolution of relationships. In addition, she is currently working on a project that compares partner selection among gay men, lesbians, and opposite-sex cohabitors and married couples. Elizabeth Thomson studies gendered patterns of contraceptive sterilization in relation to serial monogamy, the burden of childrearing and the value of reproductive potential. She is also interested in the gendered influence in couple decision-making about childbearing, marriage and divorce. She also examines childbearing in stepfamilies, relative value of biological mother/fatherhood and gendered responsibility for rearing stepchildren. Leann Tigges approaches the area of gender from the vantage point of the labor market, asking questions about how men's and women's labor market experiences differ and how the restructuring of the economy is affecting men and women differently. She is also very interested in the difference that "place" makes in the gendered labor market. She concentrates on the US case but sees the same theoretical perspectives and research question as relevant for other societies, including those in the "developing" world. Katherine White examines the intersection of gender and race in her research on the socio-economic consequences of migration. Specifically, she has examined occupational outcomes and migration patterns among participants of the historical Great Migration of southerners to the North and West. White is beginning a new project focusing on the socio-economic well-being of participants of the Return Migration between 1970 and 2000 and the southern communities to which they "returned." Erik Olin Wright |