DEPARTMENTAL RESEARCH SPECIALIZATION AREAS
Arts, culture, and religion
Cities, states, and political economy
Deviant behavior and social control
Gender and sexuality
Health and the life course
Race, ethnicity, and immigration
Social movements, politics, and power
Work, labor, and occupations
Arts, culture, and religion covers a wide variety of topics including cultural consumption and production, cultural conflict, creativity and innovation, sociology of religion, religious callings and vocational voice, sociology of knowledge, music, neo-bohemian art, and media and journalism. Faculty members in this area maintain a close working relationship with the Curb Center for Art, Enterprise, and Public Policy at Vanderbilt, focusing on the American system of creative enterprise, expressive life and the public interest.
Faculty are currently studying innovation in American theatre, cultural consumption patterns among college students, tradition and commerce at Nashville's country music festival, the Protestant clergy's contribution to German science, Jewish belonging through mass tourism, the social iconography of AIDS Campaigns, and Neo-Bohemian art.
Faculty: George Becker, Laura Carpenter, Daniel Cornfield, Larry Isaac, Shaul Kelner, Richard Lloyd, Richard Pitt, and Steven Tepper
Cities, states, and political economy focuses on a variety of topics including cultural conflict in urban settings, urban enclaves, social welfare services, immigration labor, urban labor markets, political change and policy formation, globalization, the new urban economy, and cities in the world economy.
Faculty in this area are currently working on projects covering globalization, culture, and the new urban economy, the militia movement, class formation, and state-building in Gilded Age America, creative cities and downtown redevelopment, cultural conflict in cities across the U.S., and the role of social movements in gaining change in law, policy, and politics.
Faculty: Daniel Cornfield, Larry Isaac, Richard Lloyd, Holly McCammon, Mariano Sana, Ronnie Steinberg, and Steven Tepper
Deviant behavior and social control includes scholars interested in crime, law and deviance, juvenile delinquency, justice, persecution, social learning theory as an explanation of crime, the early modern witch craze, the institutional environments of criminal behavior, the development of criminal careers, and prison life.
Faculty in this area are currently working on projects looking at the relationship between criminal offending and homicide victimization, and the effect of time served on future criminal offending among chronic youthful offenders.
Faculty:
Gender and sexuality focuses on gender inequality, gender and social support networks, gendered sexuality, women's rights, men's gender role ideology, and household labor participation. Faculty in this area maintain a close working relationship with Women's and Gender Studies at Vanderbilt, which aims to examine gender as a socio-cultural construct that orders human perceptions and practices.
Current faculty research projects include the gendered character of increasing economic inequality, the effects of men's bachelorhood on household labor participation, male circumcision and female genital cutting as public problems in the United States, Great Britain, and Canada, gendered political opportunities and women's activism, and the effects of region, rurality, and religion on U.S. gender roles.
Faculty: Karen Campbell, Laura Carpenter, Holly McCammon, Richard Pitt, and Lijun Song.
Health and the life course includes faculty members interested in topics such as the sociology of mental health, racial/ethnic disparities in health, differences in suicide rates, medical communication patterns, aging and demography, sexual health, social determinants of health, AIDS and public health, and social capital and health. Faculty in this area maintain a close working relationship with the Center for Medicine, Health, and Society at Vanderbilt, which focuses on looking at health and health care in their social and cultural contexts.
Faculty in this area are currently studying adolescent health and migration in Mexico, social iconography of AIDS campaigns in Accra, Ghana, migration and access to health care, communication patterns in medical encounters, the effects of social capital on life satisfaction, and race and gender differences in suicide rates.
Faculty: George Becker, Tony Brown, Laura Carpenter, Daniel Cornfield, Katharine Donato, and Lijun Song
Race, ethnicity, and immigration focuses on racial and ethnic relations, racial disparities in mental health, immigrant labor, immigrants in the U.S., international migration between the U.S. and Mexico, immigrant arts participation, and skilled migration. Faculty members in this area maintain a close working relationship with both the Center for Latin American Studies and the Program in African American and Diaspora Studies.
Faculty members are currently working on projects looking at migration of college-educated workers to the United States and labor-market impacts, immigrant parent involvement in schools, adolescent health and migration in Mexico, migration and access to health care, employment and labor issues among immigrants and refugees in Nashville, and race, racism and mental health outcomes.
Faculty: Tony Brown, Laura Carpenter, Katharine Donato, Shaul Kelner, Richard Pitt, and Mariano Sana.
Social movements, politics, and power brings together faculty with research interests in a variety of social movements, including the labor movement, women's activism, the civil rights movement, and health movements as well as social change and political sociology.
Faculty in this area are currently developing projects focusing on the U.S. woman suffrage and jury movements, a biography and history of the early Nashville civil rights movement, the influence of lethal repression on the early American labor movement, the Soviet Jewry movement in American Jewish culture, and international AIDS media campaigns to engender changes in sexual behavior.
Faculty: Laura Carpenter, Daniel Cornfield, Larry Isaac, Richard Lloyd, Holly McCammon, Lijun Song, and Steven Tepper
Work, labor, and occupations includes scholars interested in occupations and professions, women and work in the United States, labor markets, labor movements, labor-management relations, labor theory and history, and wage discrimination.
Faculty in this area are currently working on projects regarding the career paths of music professionals, immigrant labor and employment issues in Nashville, women's entry into professions in the U.S., wage discrimination among exercise professionals, yoga instructors, and massage workers, and state regulation of nurse practitioners.
Faculty: Karen Campbell, Daniel Cornfield, Larry Isaac, Richard Lloyd, Richard Pitt, Mariano Sana, Lijun Song, and Steven Tepper