The Sociology Project

Richard Arum. Professor of Sociology and Education; Department of Humanities and Social Sciences
Education: (Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1996; M.Ed. Harvard Graduate School of Education, 1988).
Selected Works: Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa, Academically Adift: Limited Learning on College Campuses (University of Chicago Press, 2011). Richard Arum and Melissa Velez, eds. Improving Learning Environments in Schools: Lessons from Abroad (Stanford University Press, 2012). Yossi Shavit, Richard Arum and Adam Gamoran, eds. Stratification in Higher Education: A Comparative Study (Stanford University Press, 2007). Richard Arum and Walter Mueller, eds. The Reemergence of Self-Employment : A Comparative Study of Self-Employment Dynamics and Social Inequality (Princeton University Press, 2004). Judging School Discipline: The Crisis of Moral Authority (Harvard University Press, 2003) with Irenee Beattie, Richard Pitt, Jennifer Thompson and Sandra Way. The Structure of Schooling: Readings in the Sociology of Education, 2nd edition (Pine Forge-Sage, 2010), coedited with Irenee Beattie and Karly Ford.
Current Research: Education, legal and institutional environments of schools, social stratification, student achievement and socialization, formal organizations, self employment.
Teaching: I am teaching methodology, stratification, and the sociology of education in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences (Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development) and in the Department of Sociology (Faculty of Arts and Sciences).



Vivek Chibber. Associate Professor of Sociology

Ph.D. 1999 (Sociology), University of Wisconsin; M.A. 1991 (Sociology), University of Wisconsin; B.A. 1987 (Political Science), Northwestern University.

Areas of Research/Interest: Economic sociology; sociology of development; Marxian theory; political sociology; comparative-historical sociology; social theory.



Troy Duster is a sociologist with research interests in the sociology of science, public policy, race and ethnicity and deviance. He is a Chancellor's Professor of Sociology at UC Berkeley and professor of sociology and director of the Institute for the History of the Production of Knowledge at New York University. He contributed to White-Washing Race: The Myth of a Color-blind Society.

He is the grandson of civil rights activist Ida B. Wells-Barnett. In 1970, he published "The Legislation of Morality," in which he showed how the moral indignation regarding addiction at the time of the Harrison Narcotic Law (1914) pointed fingers not at the middle- and upper-class users of drugs but at the lower classes of Americans.



Paula England is Professor of Sociology at New York University and an affiliate of the Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Her research focuses on gender issues in labor markets, and on how changes in family life are affected by gender and class systems. England's work on gender inequality often takes an interdisciplinary approach, successfully fostering dialogue between sociologists, economists, demographers, and feminists. She recently received the Distinguished Career Award, American Sociological Associations Section on Sociology of the Family and was elected Francis Perkins Fellow, American Academy of Political and Social Science.



Thomas Ertman. Associate Professor of Sociology; Director of Undergraduate Studies

Ph.D. 1990, M.A. 1985, B.A. 1981, Harvard University.

Areas of Research/Interest: Comparative/historical sociology; political sociology; social theory; sociology of the arts.

For as far back as I can remember, I have struggled to understand why Europe--and especially Germany--left the path of peace and prosperity after 1914 for that of war and genocide. While an undergraduate, I thought philosophy might throw some light on this problem, but I found its answers too abstract. It was the intellectual dynamism of historical sociology in the early 1980's, open as it was to the latest developments in history, social theory and political science, that persuaded me that I could best pursue this question further as a graduate student in sociology.



Kathleen Gerson is Professor of Sociology and Collegiate Professor of Arts and Science at New York University. Her work focuses on the connections among gender, work, and family life in post-industrial societies. She conducts research that seeks to combine the deep understandings of qualitative, life history interviews with the rigor of systematically collected samples and carefully situated comparisons. Her theoretical concern aims to explain the interactive links between processes of social and individual change, with special attention to how institutional conflicts and contradictions prompt creative human action. She is currently at work on a new project investigating "new moral dilemmas of work and care."

Kathleen''s most recent book, The Unfinished Revolution: Coming of Age in a New Era of Gender, Work, and Family (Oxford University Press, paperback, 2011, hardback, 2010) examines how new generations have experienced growing up amid changing families and blurring gender boundaries. The Unfinished Revolutionshows how irreversible but incomplete change has created a growing clash between new egalitarian ideals and resistant social institutions. Although young women and men hope to fashion flexible, egalitarian gender strategies, they are falling back on less desirable options that foster a new gender divide between "self-reliant" women and "neo-traditional" men. The solution to these 21st century conundrums is to finish the gender revolution by creating more flexible, egalitarian workplaces and child-supportive communities.

Professor Gerson is also the author or co-author of four additional books and over fifty articles, essays, and opinion pieces. Her first major work, Hard Choices: How Women Decide About Work, Career, and Motherhood(University of California, 1985; paperback, 1986), provided an early framework for understanding women''s paths and strategies amid revolutionary shifts in work, marriage, and parenthood. A finalist for the C. Wright Mills Award and the William J. Goode Distinguished Book Award, Hard Choices continues to inform ongoing debates about women''s work and family commitments. Her next book, No Man''s Land: Men''s Changing Commitments to Family and Work (Basic Books, 1993; paperback, 1994), analyzed the pervasive but often ignored changes in men''s lives and charted men''s responses to institutional shifts that have given them both expanded freedom to avoid family responsibilities and rising incentives to become more involved in family life.No Man's Land was chosen as an ASA "Author Meets the Critics" featured book and selected as a "new and noteworthy" paperback by The New York Times Book Review.

More recently, Gerson teamed with Jerry A. Jacobs (University of Pennsylvania) on The Time Divide: Family, Work, and Gender Inequality (Harvard University Press, 2004, paperback, 2005), which draws on census, survey, and cross-national data to explain how and why growing inequality in working time is dividing Americans in new ways. The Time Divide was named a ""best business book"" by Strategy Business magazine, received honorable mention for the Mirra Komarovsky Book Award, and was featured at ""Author Meets the Critics"" sessions for the ASA, the ESS, and the Southern Sociological Society. Work from this project also received the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for Excellence in Work-Family Research.

Kathleen has held visiting positions at the Russell Sage Foundation (New York City) and the Center for the Study of Status Passages and Risks in the Life Course (Bremen, Germany) and has served as President of the Eastern Sociological Society, NYU Sociology Department Chair, Chair of the ASA Family Section, and an editorial board member of the American Sociological Review and Work and Occupations. She has participated in a wide range of research and policy initiatives, including the Ford Foundation Project on Integrating Work, Family, and Community; the Sloan Foundation Research Network on Work-Family Issues; the Gender Module of the General Social Survey; the Council of Research Advisors for Purdue's Center for Families; and Catalyst's Advisory Board for "The Next Generation of Women Leaders." She has served as a board member of the Council on Contemporary Families and was named Distinguished Feminist Lecturer on Women and Social Change by the Sociologists for Women in Society and the Charles Phelps Taft Lecturer (at the University of Cincinnati) and the Kingsley Birge Endowed Lecture (at Colby College).

Kathleen grew up in Montgomery, Alabama, and San Francisco, California. After receiving her B.A. from Stanford University and her Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, she joined the NYU faculty and has resided in New York City ever since.



Jeff Goodwin. Professor of Sociology, NYU. His research interests include social movements, revolutions, and terrorism. He has conducted research in Central America, the Philippines, South Africa, and Ireland as well as in the United States. He earned his BA (1980, Social Studies), MA (1983, Sociology), and PhD (1988, Sociology) at Harvard University.



Guillermina Jasso. Professor of Sociology; Silver Professor. Ph.D. 1974 (Sociology), Johns Hopkins University.

Areas of Research/Interest: Sociobehavioral theory; distributive justice; status; international migration; inequality; probability distributions; mathematical methods for theory building; factorial survey methods for empirical analysis.

External Affiliations: Advisory Committee for the Social, Behavioral and Economic Sciences (SBE) Directorate, National Science Foundation; Scientific Advisory Board, DIW Berlin (Deutsches Institut fuer Wirtschaftsforschung -- German Institute for Economic Research); Census Advisory Committee of Professional Associations; Board of Directors, DIW DC (Deutsches Institut fuer Wirtschaftsforschung -- German Institute for Economic Research).

Fellowships/Honors: Research grants from the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, Pew Charitable Trusts, Rockefeller Foundation, Russell Sage Foundation; Keynotes and distinguished lectures at the National Science Foundation, EQUALSOC, University of Notre Dame, Knight Center for Specialized Journalism at the University of Maryland, Research Data Centres Network of Canada, Oldendorff Institute at Tilburg University, Swedish Sociological Society, Canadian Population Society, International Society for Justice Research, and Immigration and Ethnic History Society; Research Associate, Center for Public Policy at the University of Houston; Research Fellow, IZA Bonn; Fellow, Center for the Study of Poverty and Inequality at Stanford University; Fellow, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences; Elected member/fellow of the Johns Hopkins Society of Scholars, the Sociological Research Association, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.



Jennifer Jennings is an Assistant Professor at NYU. She received her B.A. at Princeton University (2000), her M.Phil. in Education at the University of Cambridge (2003), and her Ph.D. in Sociology at Columbia University (2009).
Her recent publications include: "How Does Test Exemption Affect Schools' and Students' Academic Performance?" in Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis, "A Multiplex Theory of Urban Service Distribution: The Case of School Expenditures" in Urban Affairs Review, and "Learning to Label: Gender, Socialization, and High-Stakes Testing in Elementary School" in theBritish Journal of Sociology of Education. Dr. Jennings has served as a reviewer for theAmerican Sociological Review, Social Science Quarterly and many other journals. She has presented her work at the International Sociological Association, the American Sociological Association and the American Education Research Association. Before joining the NYU faculty, she will spend two years as a Robert Wood Johnson Health and Society Postdoctoral Scholar at Harvard University.



Colin Jerolmack. Assistant Professor of Sociology, Environmental Studies

Ph.D. 2009, M.A. 2005 (Sociology), City University of New York; B.S. 2000 (Psychology), Drexel University.

Areas of Research/Interest: Ethnography; urban communities; environmental sociology; animals and society; culture; health; social theory.

Fellowships/Honors: Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy, Harvard University [2008-2010]

Select Publications:

Jerolmack, Colin. 2010. "Humans, Animals, and Play: Theorizing Interaction When Intersubjectivity is Problematic." Sociological Theory, Forthcoming.

Jerolmack, Colin. 2009. "Primary Groups and Cosmopolitan Ties: The Rooftop Pigeon Flyers of New York." Ethnography, 10(2/3): 211-233.

Jerolmack, Colin. 2008. "How Pigeons Became Rats: The Cultural-Spatial Logic of Problem Animals." Social Problems, 55(2): 72-94.

Jerolmack, Colin. 2007. "Animal Practices, Ethnicity and Community: The Turkish Pigeon Handlers of Berlin." American Sociological Review, 72(6): 874-894.



Lynne Haney, Professor of Sociology Ph.D. 1997 (sociology), California (Berkeley); M.A. 1992 (sociology); B.A. (Magna Cum Laude) 1990 (sociology), California (San Diego).

Areas of Research/Interest: Gender studies/feminist theory; political sociology; European studies; the welfare state; ethnographic methods.

External Affiliations: American Sociological Association; Sociologists for Women in Society; Social Science History Association; European Social Science History Association; Society for the Study of Social Problems.

Fellowships/Honors: American Sociological Association Award for Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship in Sex and Gender, 1999; American Council of Learned Societies Postdoctoral Fellowship, 1999-2000; Faculty Fellow, The Remarque Institute, NYU, 1999-2000; Phi Beta Kappa Dissertation Award, 1996; Chancellor's Dissertation Fellowship, 1996.

Select Publications:

Offending Women: Power, Punishment, and the Regulation of Desire. (University of California Press, 2010.)

"Working through Mass Incarceration: Gender and the Politics of Prison Labor from East to West." Signs, Autumn 2010 (in press).

Inventing the Needy: Gender and the Politics of Welfare in Hungary (University of California Press, 2002.)

"Feminist State Theory: Applications to Jurisprudence, Criminology, and the Welfare State." Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 26. 2000



Eric Klinenberg is Professor of Sociology, Public Policy, and Media, Culture, and Communications at New York University, and editor of the journal Public Culture. His latest book, Going Solo: The Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone, was published in February 2012 by the Penguin Press.



Steven Lukes. Professor of Sociology. D.Phil. 1968 (Sociology), M.A. 1967, B.A. 1962, Oxford University.

Areas of Research/Interest: Political and social theory; the sociology of Durkheim and his followers; individualism; power; rationality; the category of the person; Marxism and ethics; sociology of morality; new forms of liberalism.



Jeff Manza (Ph.D University of California - Berkeley, 1995) is Professor of Sociology, and the former Chair (2009-12) of the Department of Sociology at New York University. Before coming to NYU, he taught at Penn State (1996-98) and Northwestern (1998-2006). His teaching and research interests lay at the intersection of inequality, political sociology, and public policy. His research has examined how different types of social identities and inequalities influence political processes such as voting behavior, partisanship, and public opinion (at both the macro and micro level). In collaboration with Christopher Uggen, he has been involved in a long-term project that has examined the causes and consequences of felon disenfranchisement in the United States; their book Locked Out: Felon Disenfranchisement and American Democracy (Oxford University Press 2006) is the standard work on the topic, and Manza and Uggen have provided advice and expert testimony to a variety of policy organizations, courts and legislative bodies dealing with the right to vote for convicted and former felons. Manza is the co-author of three books with Clem Brooks (of Indiana University): Social Cleavages and Political Change (Oxford University Press, 1999), a study of the changing social demography of the American electorate and its partisan consequences; an analysis of the comparative impact of public opinion on welfare state effort in the OECD democracies entitled Why Welfare States Persist (University of Chicago Press, 2007); and most recently the forthcoming Whose Rights?: Counterterrorism and the Dark Side of American Public Opinion (Russell Sage Foundation Press, 2013), an examination of the sources and persistence of public support for harsh counterterrorism policies that highlights the role of American national identity in shaping individual attitudes. He is also the co-editor of Navigating Public Opinion (Oxford University Press, 2002), a collaborative examination of the conditions under which public opinion influences policymaking processes. In addition to his books, Manza's work has appeared in numerous scientific journals in several disciplines, including the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Sociological Theory, Public Opinion Quarterly, and the Journal of Politics, as well as newspapers and general interest magazines. He is currently completing a book (with Clem Brooks) on the surprising right-turn of the American pubic in the face of the Great Recession, the most severe economic downturn since the 1930s. Having taught courses on the sociology of inequality for many years, Manza also recently edited a new inequality reader highlighting the intersection of politics and social inequality, entitled Inequality and Society (W.W. Norton, 2009). In addition to scholarship and teaching, Manza has served in a variety of administrative posts. At NYU, he chaired the Department of Sociology from 2009 to 2012. During this time, he helped to make a number of major faculty appointments, created a new MA program in Applied Quantitative Research (which will begin in the fall of 2013), and led the Department through an extensive curricular reform of the graduate program after an extensive review of the best practices elsewhere. His most ambitious administrative project, however, was to launch The Sociology Project: An Introduction to the Sociological Imagination (Pearson 2012), a unique joint venture of the Department which seeks to develop a new model for the introductory textbook, with individual chapters authored by a faculty member who teaches and writes on that topic. The philosopher of science Thomas Kuhn once famously noted that introductory textbooks are notoriously conservative and backward relative to the research mainstream of any scientific field; The Sociology Project is an attempt to overcome the standard problems of the textbook by building it around the research mainstream, drawing on the rich intellectual resources of the NYU Department to achieve it. The book is also unique in that profits will be reinvested in the graduate and undergraduate sociology programs at NYU, and to support minority graduate student fellowships. Before coming to NYU, Manza served as the Associate Director and Acting Director of the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University, a major social science and policy research center at that institution. He has served on a variety of professional panels and boards, including a 6-year term as a member of the Board of Overseers of the General Social Survey, and he founded and serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Sociology Module for Oxford Bibliograpahies Online, an ambitious attempt to provide a comprehensive source of the central literatures in each of the subfields in sociology.



Gerald Marwell is an American sociologist, social psychologist and behavioral economist. He is currently Professor of Sociology at New York University. He is best known for his innovative work on problems of collective action, cooperation, social movements, compliance-gaining behavior, adolescence and religion.



Harvey Molotch is Professor of Sociology and Metropolitan Studies at New York University where he conducts research on issues of city growth and urban security as well as on product design and development. His books include Urban Fortunes (with John Logan) and Where Stuff Comes From.



Ann Morning, a native New Yorker, she is an associate professor of sociology at New York University and the author of The Nature of Race (University of California Press, 2011).

Ann earned her Ph.D. in 2004 from Princeton University and holds a bachelor's degree in economics and political science from Yale, as well as a master's degree in international affairs from Columbia University. Prior to becoming an academic, she worked as an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and as a U.S. Foreign Service Officer based in the American Embassy in Honduras. In 1997, however, she left behind her career in international relations to pursue graduate studies on race, demography, and the sociology of science. Since then she has published many scholarly articles on the topics of census racial classification as well as individuals' concepts of racial difference, and at NYU she teaches highly-rated courses on the sociology of race, the sociology of science, and sociological research methods.

Morning's work has been recognized by prizes including the prestigious Dissertation Award from the American Sociological Association (in 2005), and a Fulbright scholarship to spend the 2008-09 academic year at the University of Milan-Bicocca. A graduate of the United Nations International School, Morning speaks French and Italian, and counts travel among her favorite activities.



Patrick Sharkey is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at New York University, with an affiliation at NYU's Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. His research focuses on stratification and mobility, with a specialized interest in the role that neighborhoods and cities play in generating and maintaining inequality across multiple dimensions. One strand of his research seeks to describe and explain the persistence of neighborhood inequality in America's cities, and the mechanisms by which this inequality persists over time and across generations of family members. A second strand of his work focuses on the consequences of neighborhood inequality for the life chances of individuals from different racial and ethnic groups in America.



Florencia Torche is Associate Professor of Sociology at NYU, Faculty Affiliate at the Steinhardt School of Education, and Research Affiliate at INSPIRES, NYU School of Medicine.

Professor Torche's scholarship examines inequality dynamics -- how inequality persists over the life course and across generations. She has studied inequality of educational opportunity, intergenerational mobility, wealth disparities, assortative mating, and the early emergence of disadvantage -- starting as early as in the prenatal period.

Much of Torche's research uses an international comparative perspective. She has conducted several surveys, including the first national surveys of social mobility in Chile and in Mexico. Her research has been funded by the Ford Foundation, the Spencer foundation, the National Science Foundation (NSF), and the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), among others.



David Wachsmuth was trained as an urban planner in Toronto and is now a PhD candidate in Sociology at New York University. He is an organizer with GSOC-UAW, the union for graduate employees at NYU.



Lawrence Wu. A noted authority on nonmarital fertility, Sociology Professor Lawrence Wu conducts research on family structure and single motherhood, nonmarital childbearing and the life course, and statistical methods for studying social change. He holds academic leadership roles at NYU as Director of the Center for Advanced Social Science Research and as Deputy Director of the Institute for Human Development and Social Change.