SOCIOLOGY DEPARTMENT

COLLOQUIUM SERIES FOR SPRING 2008

Wednesdays from 12:00 - 1:15pm, McNeil Building, University of Pennsylvania,
3718 Locust Walk, Philadelphia, PA, Room 103
(unless otherwise noted)

January 30 – Pamela Stone, Hunter College, CUNY

“Opting Out? Why Women Really Quit Careers and Head Home.”

Pamela Stone received her BA cum laude from Duke University and her PhD from The Johns Hopkins University, both in Sociology. Her research centers around issues related to women in the workforce, with a focus on work, careers, and occupations, sex segregation, pay discrimination, and gender equity.

In research currently underway, she is looking at working mothers in high-level professional jobs who leave the labor force to become full-time, at-home mothers. She is interested in understanding how they came to make this decision, the factors influencing it, and its implications for the women themselves, their families, and their communities, as well as for women and the workplace generally. A recipient of a CUNY Scholar Incentive Award, Professor Stone was a Fellow at the Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University, during 1998-2000 and on leave there for the 2000-2001 academic year. While at Radcliffe, she began fieldwork for her current project and enhanced her expertise in the area of work-family policy.

Website: http://maxweber.hunter.cuny.edu/socio/faculty/stone.html

February 6 – James Moody, Duke University

"Diffusion over Dynamic Networks: Representations and Implications."

James Moody is an Associate Professor, Duke University Department of Sociology. His research interests include: Social networks, theory, and quantitative methodology.

Website(s):
http://www.soc.duke.edu/~jmoody77/
http://fds.duke.edu/db/aas/Sociology/faculty/moody.77

February 20 – No Colloquium

February 27 – Elizabeth A. Armstrong, Indiana University

"When Gender and Life Stage Collide: Young Women’s Sexual and Relational Dilemmas"

Elizabeth A. Armstrong received her Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in 1998. She is currently Assistant Professor and incoming Director of Undergraduate Studies. Her research interests include sexuality, gender, social movements, sociology of culture, and higher education. She is author of Forging Gay Identities: Organizing Sexuality in San Francisco, 1950-1994 (Chicago 2002). More recently, her work on the American gay movement has turned toward exploring the construction of collective memory. She is also investigating the sexual cultures of American colleges and universities. With collaborators, she conducted a year of ethnography on a women’s floor in a residence hall and two waves of in-depth interviews with more than 40 residents of this floor. A first paper from this project, “Sexual Assault on Campus: A Multi-level, Integrative Approach to Party Rape,” co-authored with Laura Hamilton and Brian Sweeney, is forthcoming in Social Problems.

Website(s): http://www.indiana.edu/~soc/zbio_Armstrong.shtml

March 5 – Katherine Newman, Princeton University

"Failure to Launch?  The Meaning of Delayed Departure from the Family Home in Western Europe and Japan"

Katherine Newman is Director, Princeton Institute for International & Regional Studies, Director, Joint Doctoral Programs in Sociology, Politics, Psychology and Social Policy and the Malcolm Stevenson Forbes, Class of 1941 Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs. She is the author of several books that research poverty, work and stratification.

"WHAT IT IS LIKE TO BE WORKING, BUT POOR IN THE U.S. AND OTHER COUNTRIES? Millions of Americans work full time and year ‘round but earn so little that they are still living below the poverty line. Even more families are “near poor,” with incomes that put them above the magic line, but make them vulnerable to financial disaster. In No Shame in My Game and Chutes and Ladders, I find that the working poor share values and goals with many middle class Americans: they want their children to succeed where they have faltered; they want to live in safe, secure neighborhoods; they look to the work world as a place in which to find meaning, even in menial jobs. Yet the commonalities with the middle class end at the point where we consider the barriers they face. In periods of high growth, labor market opportunities open up and make it possible for the working poor to become upwardly mobile. But in bad times, the resistance of employers, the consequences of erratic ties to the labor market generated by family demands, and the difficulty of piling up more educational credentials come home to roost."

Website(s): http://sociology.princeton.edu/Faculty/Newman/

March 19 – Philip Gorski, Yale University

“Religious America? Secular Europe? Understanding Religious Change in the Modern West.”

Website(s): http://www.yale.edu/sociology/faculty/pages/gorski/

March 26 - Marcia J. Carlson, Columbia University

“Patterns and Implications of Multi-Partnered Fertility among Urban U.S. Parents.”

Marcia J. Carlson is Associate Professor of Social Work and Sociology at Columbia University. Her primary research interests center on the links between family contexts and the wellbeing of children and parents, including the effects of relevant public policies. Her most recent work is focused on father involvement, co-parenting, union formation, and couple relationship quality among unmarried parents. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology (demography) from the University of Michigan in 1999

Website(s): http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ssw/faculty/profiles/carlson.html

April 2 - Diane Vaughan, Columbia University

Diane Vaughan received her Ph.D. in Sociology, Ohio State University, 1979, and taught at Boston College from 1984 to 2005.  During this time, she was awarded fellowships at Yale (1979-82), Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford (1986-87), The American Bar Foundation (1988-1989), The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (1996-1997), and John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2003-04). She came to Columbia in 2005.

Her interests are the sociology of organizations, sociology of culture, deviance and social control, field methods, research design, and science, knowledge, and technology.  The prime theoretical focus of her research is how the social - history, institutions, organizations - affect individual meanings, decisions, and action. Culture is the important mediator in this process, making ethnographic methods, supplemented by interviews, the best means of understanding these relationships.

Website(s): http://www.sociology.columbia.edu/fac-bios/vaughan/faculty.html

April 16 – Adam Gamoran, University of Wisconsin

"Expansion through diversion in higher education: The case of Scotland's 'new universities.'"

Adam Gamoran is Professor of Sociology and Educational Policy Studies and Director of WCER (Wisconsin Center for Education Research).

His areas of interest include the sociology of education, organizational analysis, and social stratification. His research interests include school organization, stratification and inequality in education, and resource allocation in school systems.

Website(s):
http://www.ssc.wisc.edu/soc/faculty/show-person.php?person_id=17
http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/people/staff.php?sid=413

April 23 – Karen Cerulo, Rutgers University

"Never Saw it Coming: Cultural Challenges to Envisioning the Worst."

Karen Cerulo, Professor of Sociology, teaches courses in culture, media, social deviance, and statistics.  Her research interests are in the areas of culture and cognition (with a special emphasis on conceptualization), media, technology and social change, symbol systems, and measurement techniques. Professor Cerulo's research addresses a variety of themes within the sociology of culture and cognition.  Her earliest works explore the social foundations of symbol systems -- music, scent, verbal scripts, and visual images.  Her research examines the ways in which social actors use such symbols to construct personal identity, collective identity, and the identity of eras, events, and places.  Her work also charts the ways in which social factors -- i.e. the nature of social ties, the stability of social environments, power structures, economic systems of exchange, and technological innovations – help to shape the content, form, meaning, and effectiveness of symbols

Website(s):
http://sociology.rutgers.edu/FACULTY/cerulo.html
http://sociology.rutgers.edu/faculty.html#cerulo

Last Modified: 05-Mar-2008
For updates, comments please contact: saunderc@ssc.upenn.edu