Students on the Job Market
Alicia Juskewycz
Areas of Specialization: Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Culture, Stratification and Inequalities, Sexualities, Gender, Political Sociology, Social Movements, Human Rights, Religious Margins and Movements
Carol Ann MacGregor
Areas of Specialization: Religion, Education, Inequality, Culture, Organizations, Quantitative Methods
LiErin Probasco
Areas of Specialization: Inequality, culture, sociology of religion, race/ethnicity, altruism, poverty, ethnography, transnational ties, research methods, community-based/service learning pedagogy
Daniel Schneider
Areas of Specialization: Social demography, economic sociology, gender, marriage and the family, inequality, and social policy
Liza Steele
Areas of Specialization: Stratification/Inequality, Research Methods (quantitative and qualitative), Comparative Sociology, Brazil, China, Urban Sociology, Political Sociology, Religion
Charles Varner
Areas of Specialization: Stratification and Inequality, Political Sociology, Economic Sociology, Race and Ethnicity, Research Methods, Urban Sociology
Scott Leon Washington
Areas of Specialization: Stratification and Inequality, Sociology of Law, Sociology of Culture, Political Sociology, Organizations, Comparative and Historical Sociology, Demography, Research Methods, Sociological Theory, Race and Ethnicity
Alicia Juskewycz
Current Position
Teaching Fellow, Northland College, Ashland, WI (2011-2012)
Education
Ph.D. Princeton University, Sociology, expected 2012
M.A. Princeton University, Sociology, 2009
B.A. Pomona College, Psychology, 2004, Cum Laude, Minor in Politics
Areas of Specialization
Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Culture, Stratification and Inequalities, Sexualities, Gender, Political Sociology, Social Movements, Human Rights, Religious Margins and Movements
Dissertation
Title: Marginal Religious and Social Groups in American Cultural Representations of Religious Freedom, 1990-2010
Committee: Robert Wuthnow (chair), Miguel Centeno, King-To Yeung
This dissertation traces how the topic of religious freedom appears in contemporary American sociopolitical discourse, both domestic and international, recuperating the products of a mainstream idea in religious life for marginal groups that fall both within and outside of the category of religion (e.g., “cults,” LGBTQ people, racialized and nationalized others, and subjects of abuse and harm in religious
contexts). Building a snapshot of complex demographic and strategic deployments of a significant yet taken-for-granted cultural concept, I examine how the boundaries around religion as a social category are negotiated through religious freedom arguments, using mixed-methods analysis of mass media data, fieldwork and interviews with religious freedom workers at the U.S. Department of State, and high-profile boundary work across public discourse. I find that discussion of religious freedom increasingly emphasizes broad categorical relationships between religion and society rather than acts of discrimination targeting minority groups. However, differential rates of such change with respect to different kinds of social communities produce wide disparities in types of international and domestic religious freedom claims and surprising parallels between globally prevalent Christian claims and the changing limited claims of visible minority religious communities. I show how religious freedom claims work to position religion as categorically vulnerable in socially relational or intersectional scenarios, focusing on 1) how American ideals about regulation-resistant domains, such as religion and sexuality, mediate interconnected yet disparate international and domestic institutional politics, and 2) implications of this sociopolitical discourse for marginal religious, sexual, racialized, and non-Western communities.
Publications
“Uganda’s ‘Anti-Homosexuality’ Bill Through the Lens of Religious Freedom.” In Human Rights in Global Perspective, edited by Michael Mbanaso and Chima Korieh. Book in preparation.
“Uganda’s ‘Anti-Homosexuality’ Bill, Religion, and Transnational Inequalities.” In A Queer Gaze: Media and the Global LGBT Community, edited by Theresa Carilli and Jane Campbell. Book in preparation.
Editor, U.S. Department of State, Executive Summary of the 2009 Annual Report on International Religious Freedom, http://www.state.gov/g/drl/rls/irf/2009/127215.htm.
Papers Under Review
“Marginal Religious Groups and Contemporary American Religious Freedom Claims.”
“‘This Was All About Religion’: Reproductive Authenticity, Religious Ascription, and Harm in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”
Teaching Experience
Southern Methodist University, Perkins School of Theology (Instructor)
Religion and LGBTQ Issues, Summer 2012 (scheduled)
Northland College (Instructor)
Sociology of Religion, Spring 2012
Sociology of Gender, Spring 2012
Conflict Resolution, Fall 2011
Introduction to Sociology, Fall 2011
Northern Virginia Community College (Instructor)
Introduction to Sociology, Spring 2011, Summer 2011 (2 sections)
Thurgood Marshall Academy Public Charter High School, Washington, DC (Long-Term Substitute Teacher)
Music and other areas, 2010-2011
Princeton University (Teaching Assistant)
Religion in American Society (Marie Griffith), Fall 2008
Social Welfare as a Social Institution (Robin Rogers-Dillon), Spring 2008
Introduction to Sociology (Mitchell Duneier and Devah Pager), Fall 2007
Princeton University (Residence Coordinator)
Freshman Scholars Institute, Summer 2007 and 2008
Princeton University (Resident Graduate Student)
Mathey College, 2007-2008
Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth Summer Program at Franklin and Marshall College (Instructor)
Introduction to Cognitive Psychology, Summer 2006
Pomona College (Lab/Grading Assistant)
Introduction to Psychology (Sharon Goto), Spring 2003
Pomona College (Resident Advisor)
2003-2004
Honors
2011 Alternate, Charlotte W. Newcombe Dissertation Fellowship
2011 Finalist, Point Foundation LGBTQ Scholarship
2009-2010 Member, Inaugural LGBTQ Human Rights Task Force, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, U.S. Department of State
2005-2011 University Graduate Fellowship, Princeton University
2007-08, 2008-09, 2010-11 Center for the Study of Religion Graduate Research Fellow, Princeton University
2008-2009 Program on Religion, Diplomacy, and International Relations Graduate Research Fellow, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, Princeton University
2008 Participant, Princeton University Office of Religious Life Undergraduate Trip to Tanzania on Human Rights and Social Justice
2003 (Summer) Irvine Foundation Award supporting independent summer undergraduate research related to diversity on the college campus, investigating the collegegoing experiences of young adults raised and educated in a culturally separatist new religious movement, Pomona College (with Raymond Buriel)
2002 (Summer) National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates Program in Urban Ethnography at UCLA (with Jack Katz and Robert Emerson)
For More Information
http://sites.google.com/site/ajuskewycz
Carol Ann MacGregor
Education
PhD, Princeton University, Sociology, expected 2012
MA, McGill University, Sociology, 2004
BA, Queen's University, Political Studies and History, 2003
Areas of Specialization
Religion, Education, Inequality, Culture, Organizations, Quantitative Methods
Dissertation
Title: School's Out Forever: The Growth and Decline of Catholic Education in the United States
Committee: Robert Wuthnow (Chair), Paul DiMaggio, Miguel Centeno
Fewer than half of the Catholic schools that existed in the United States in 1965 exist today. At their peak, Catholic schools enrolled roughly 12% of the school-aged population. Today, they enroll just over 5% of the school aged population. Despite this decline, fully 2.5 million students stand to be displaced should the number of Catholic schools continue to decline over the coming years. In order to assess where, when and why Catholic schools have declined dramatically over the last fifty years I gathered and digitized extensive diocesan level data from the Official Catholic Directory extending back to 1900. I combine this information with county-level census data, data on religious adherence, information on bishop’s background and reputation, measures of school choice and charter legislation, data on the prevalence of sexual abuse claims, and information on schools and school districts from the National Center for Education Statistics.
I begin the dissertation by charting the unique rise of Catholic education in the United States. I then use the tools of organizational ecology to describe its’ dramatic decline. In the first major empirical chapter, I take the diocese as my unit of analysis and ask which dioceses are more likely to experience a school closure. Results suggest that schools are more likely to close in dioceses with more African American and Hispanic students. Next, I shift units of analysis and consider within a handful of case-study dioceses which schools are most likely to close. Here, I address specifically the consequences of Catholic school closures for inequality and stratification. In the 1980s there was a vigorous debate about whether Catholic schools produced ‘better’ students (as measured by test scores, later educational attainment and measures of civic participation). Although debate about the finding of these effects continues, there appears to be some consensus that while there are no universal Catholic school effects, Catholic schools produce results for the urban poor, largely because these students have traditionally been served by the worst of the worst public schools. In this chapter, I ask whether these schools that serve the urban poor are more likely to close than other schools. Preliminary results suggest that they are. In a third chapter, I focus on the process of closure and consider what factors can “save” a school targeted for closure. Here I argue that nostalgia generated by alumni, many of whom no longer have a direct connection to the school or neighborhood, can often be more successful than more conventional organizing by parents of current students.
Publications
Lim, Chaeyoon, Carol Ann MacGregor, and Robert Putnam (2011) "Secular and Liminal: Discovering Heterogeneity among Religious Nones" Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 49(4):596-618
MacGregor, Carol Ann (2008) "Religious Socialization and Children's Prayer as Cultural Object: Children's 19th Century Sunday School Books" Poetics 36(5-6):435-449
Papers Under Review
Lim, Chaeyoon and Carol Ann MacGregor “Religion and Volunteering in Context: Disentangling the Contextual Effects of Religion on Voluntary Behavior” Revise and Resubmit American Sociological Review
Lewis, Valerie. Carol Ann MacGregor, and Robert Putnam “Networks and Neighborliness: Religion and Social Capital in the Panel Study of Race and Ethnicity” Revise and Resubmit Social Science Research
Massengil, Rebekah and Carol Ann MacGregor “The Changing Impact of Religious Nonaffiliation on Schooling: The Educational Trajectories of Three Types of Religious “Nones”. Under Consideration Special Issue of Research in the Sociology of Work
MacGregor, Carol Ann. “Education Delayed: Post-natal Educational Attainment in Fragile Families”
Work in Progress
MacGregor, Carol Ann. “Affecting the Catholic School Effect: Racial and Ethnic Differences in Catholic School Closures”
MacGregor, Carol Ann “The Uses of Nostalgia: Memory and Organizational Success”
Selected Grants, Awards and Fellowships
2011 Marvin Bressler Graduate Student Teaching Award
2005-11 Center for the Study of Religion Graduate Fellowship, Princeton University
2010 Society for the Scientific Study of Religion Student Research Award
2010 Center for the Study of Social Organization Research Award, Princeton University
2008 Center for the Study of Religion Dissertation Research Support
2008-10 Junior Associate Research Fellow, Geary Institute, University College Dublin
2007 Global Network on Inequality Fellowship, Princeton University
2005 Cognitive and Textual Methods Project Fellowship, Princeton University/Templeton Foundation
Teaching Experience
Advisor, Junior Independent Work (15 majors), Sociology Department, Princeton University (Spring 2012)
Instructor, SOC 315: Religion and Sociology, Rosemont College (Spring 2010)
Preceptor, SOC 300: Claims and Evidence in Sociology, Princeton University (Fall 2010, Fall 2011)
Preceptor, SOC 101: The Sociological Perspective, Princeton University (Spring 2006, Fall 2006)
Teaching Assistant, SOCI 330: Sociological Theory, McGill University (Fall 2004)
Teaching Assistant, SOCI 318: Television and Society, McGill University (Winter 2004, Winter 2005)
Teaching Assistant, SOCI 327: Jews in North America, McGill University (Fall 2003)
Teaching Interests
Research Methods, Undergraduate Statistics, Introduction to Sociology, Urban Sociology, Religion, Education, Culture, Inequality, Organizations
For more information
http://www.carolannmacgregor.com
LiErin Probasco
Education
Princeton University, Ph.D., Sociology. Expected Spring 2012.
Princeton University, M.A., Sociology. 2008.
Swarthmore College, B.A., Sociology-Anthropology. 2004. (High Honors.)
Research/Teaching Interests
inequality, culture, sociology of religion, race/ethnicity, altruism, poverty, ethnography, transnational ties, research methods, community-based/service learning pedagogy
Dissertation
Title: "Religious humanitarian aid travel and the micro-foundations of transnational generosity."
Committee: Robert Wuthnow (chair), Viviana Zelizer, Miguel Centeno
My dissertation examines the building blocks and limits of transnational generosity through a popular but poorly understood religious practice: the international short-term mission trip. Research has outlined the landscape of US congregations’ global outreach, but social scientists know little about how these brief but reportedly transformative encounters shape the identities, social ties, and generous behavior of participants. I examine how short-term encounters across durable social differences (including nationality, wealth, and race) set patterns of interaction and reframe social boundaries that contribute to or prevent the formation of transnational generosity. Data include two years of fieldwork in Nicaragua and the United States with two aid agencies and interviews with over 200 US and Nicaraguan aid participants. Chapters address the different interaction settings in which the cultural meanings of cross-cultural encounters develop, including orientation rituals, shared labor, fictive kinship ties, and reciprocal gift exchange. I examine the impact of travel on other social ties, finding travelers’ sense of closeness to Nicaraguans facilitates their efforts to draw strong moral boundaries between themselves and poor people of color within the United States. I conclude by linking micro-level interaction rituals to mezzo- and macro- level dynamics of cross-national humanitarian aid and cultural dependency.
Selected Publications/Working Papers
2010 Douglas Massey and LiErin Probasco. "Divergent streams: Race-gender achievement gaps at selective colleges and universities." The DuBois Review. 7(1):219-246.
(working paper) “Giving time and resources: long-term effects of short-term religious travel.”
(working paper) “Patrons and Prayers: agency and empowerment in Nicaraguans’ explanations of receiving cross-national aid.”
Teaching Experience
Adjunct positions
2011 American Ethnic and Racial Groups. Kean University
2011 Short Term Mission Travel. Union Presbyterian Seminary.
2010 Short Term Mission Travel. Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University.
2009 Ministry with Young Adults. Lutheran Theological Seminary of Philadelphia.
Teaching Assistantships
2007 Comparative Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity (SOC 227) three sections, for Prof. Patricia Fernandez-Kelly). Princeton University.
2006 Race and Public Policy (SOC/WWS 481) three sections, for Prof. Douglas Massey. Princeton University.
Selected Grants/Awards
2010-2011 Louisville Institute Dissertation Writing Fellowship. ($19,000)
2010 Student Research Grant. Society for the Scientific Study of Religion. ($3000)
2007-2012 Center for the Study of Religion Graduate Student Fellow. ($5000-$6000/year)
2008-2012 Center for the Study of Religion Teaching Fellow. 2008-2011. ($7000/year)
Daniel Schneider
Education
Princeton University, Ph.D., Sociology and Social Policy (expected 2012)
Princeton University, M.A., Sociology, 2009 (with distinction)
Brown University, A.B., Public Policy and American Institutions, 2003, magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa
Research Interests
Social demography, economic sociology, gender, marriage and the family, inequality, and social policy
Dissertation
Title: The Marriage Bar: Wealth and the Propensity to Marry
Committee: Sara McLanahan (Chair), Viviana Zelizer, and Devah Pager
Since the middle of the 20th Century, the institution of marriage has undergone dramatic change in the United States as men and women have come to marry later and less. Marriage has also become increasingly stratified, with large gaps emerging between blacks and whites and between the more and less educated in the timing and incidence of first marriage. Scholars of the family have long focused on how education, employment, and earnings affect individuals’ likelihood of marriage. However, recent qualitative and ethnographic research suggests that to adequately account for these significant shifts in marriage, scholars must also consider the role of wealth in marriage entry. I examine the link between wealth and first marriage in several empirical studies. I first use longitudinal data to show that an individual’s wealth affects his or her likelihood of marriage and that racial and educational inequalities in wealth ownership explain a share of the disparities in marriage entry along those same lines. I next ask if shifts in marriage over the past fifty years can be understood to be a product, at least in part, of changes in the timing of wealth acquisition or changes in the importance of wealth for marriage. I find preliminary evidence that the relationship between wealth and marriage has grown stronger across recent cohorts. My third empirical chapter makes use of the recent shocks to wealth holdings brought on by the Great Recession to generate better causal estimates of the link between wealth and marriage. I find evidence that those who have lost wealth in the crisis are more likely to plan to delay marriage. My dissertation provides new insight into the causes of profound changes in a key social institution and charts the ways in which social standards of marriageability evolve across generations. In so doing, I identify a process of intergenerational disadvantage in which racial and educational inequalities in wealth lead those from already disadvantaged groups to marry later and less, diminishing the benefits they and their children derive from marriage.
Selected Publications
Schneider, Daniel. Forthcoming in 2012. “Gender Deviance and Household Work: The Role of Occupation.” American Journal of Sociology. 117(4)
Schneider, Daniel. Forthcoming in 2011. “Wealth and the Marital Divide.” American Journal of Sociology. 117(2).
Schneider, Daniel. 2011. “Market Earnings and Household Work: New Tests of Gender Performance Theory.” Journal of Marriage and Family 73(4): 845-860.
Lusardi, Annamaria, Daniel Schneider, and Peter Tufano. 2011. “Financially Fragile Households: Evidence and Implications.” Brookings Papers on Economic Activity.
McLanahan, Sara, Laura Tach, and Daniel Schneider. “The Causal Effect of Family Structure.” In preparation for the Annual Review of Sociology. Vol. 38 (2012)
Selected Honors, Awards, and Fellowships
2011-2012 Charlotte Elizabeth Proctor Honorific Fellowship, Princeton University
2008-2011 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
2011 National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant
2011 Graduate Student Paper Award, ASA Sociology of Population Section
2010 & 2009 Charles F. Westoff Prize in Demography, Princeton University, Office of Population Research
2009 Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Award, ASA Sociology of the Family Section
2009 Candace Rogers Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Prize, Eastern Sociological Society
2009 Poverty, Class, and Inequality Student Paper Award, Society for the Study of Social Problems
2009 Marvin Bressler Graduate Student Teaching Award, Princeton University, Department of Sociology
Teaching Experience
SOC 345: Money, Work and Social Life, Princeton University (Teaching Assistant)
SOC 101: The Sociological Perspective (Teaching Assistant)
For More Information
http://www.princeton.edu/~djschnei
Liza Steele
Education
PhD, Sociology, Princeton University, expected 2012
MA, Sociology, Princeton University, 2009
Master of International Affairs, Columbia University – School of International and Public Affairs (SIPA), 2004
BA, Political Science, Columbia University – Columbia College, 2003
Dissertation
Title: Determinants of Support for Income Inequality and Welfare Policies in Brazil, China, France, and the United States
Committee: Scott Lynch and Edward Telles (Co-Chairs), Douglas Massey, Robert Wuthnow
Why do societies vary so greatly in their equality and redistribution preferences? This dissertation presents an in-depth comparative analysis of differences in public opinion about income equality and welfare-state benefits in four major economic powers with widely distinct socioeconomic systems: the United States, France, Brazil, and China, supplemented by a global 91-country analysis. This study goes beyond most existing research by examining stratification attitudes in developing, as well as developed, countries, and through the consideration of attitudes at multiple time points rather than only one point in time. By analyzing four countries at several time points over a span of nearly two decades (1990-2008), this study will illuminate how public opinion varies under regimes that differ widely in development, inequality, and social spending. The combination of these findings with the results of the 91-country analysis will produce results with global implications regarding country- and individual-level predictors of variation in stratification attitudes, along with other types of values and public opinion, among and within the varied socioeconomic systems of countries around the world.
Publications
Steele, Liza. 2011. “‘A Gift from God’: Adolescent Motherhood and Religion in Brazilian Favelas.” Sociology of Religion 72: 4-27.
Steele, Liza and Raymond C. Kuo. 2007. “Terrorism in Xinjiang?” Ethnopolitics 6: 1-19.
Steele, Liza. Forthcoming. "Multiple Faiths." in Encyclopedia of Global Religion, edited by Wade Clark Roof and Mark Juergensmeyer. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Steele, Liza. Forthcoming. "Deng Xiaoping" in Encyclopedia of Global Religion, edited by Wade Clark Roof and Mark Juergensmeyer. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Publications.
Under Review
Steele, Liza. “Valuing the Welfare State: A Global Analysis.” (under review)
Steele, Liza and Scott M. Lynch. “The Pursuit of Happiness in China: Individualism, Collectivism, and Subjective Well-Being.” (under review)
Selected Honors and Awards
2011 ASA Children and Youth Section Graduate Student Paper Award
2011 ASA Community and Urban Sociology Section Graduate Student Paper Award Honorable Mention
2009-2010 Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies dissertation research award
2009-2010 Princeton East Asian Studies Program dissertation research award
2009 Tuition and Mobility Scholarships for the European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) Summer School in Methods and Techniques
2008-2009 Princeton Program on Latin American Studies research award
2007-2010 Princeton Center for the Study of Religion Graduate Fellow
2006-2010 Marian J. Levy Award in East Asian Studies, Princeton University
Teaching
SOC 500: Applied Social Statistics (Teaching Assistant – graduate level)
URB 201/SOC 203: Introduction to Urban Studies (Teaching Assistant)
Teaching Interests
Statistics, Stratification, Comparative Sociology, Urban Studies, Asia, Latin America, Political Sociology, Sociology of Religion
For More Information
http://www.princeton.edu/~lsteele/
Charles Varner
Education
PhD, Princeton University, Sociology, expected 2012.
AB, Harvard University, Russian Studies, 1999.
Research Interests
Stratification and Inequality, Political Sociology, Economic Sociology, Race and Ethnicity, Research Methods, Urban Sociology
Dissertation
Title: "'In Tax We Trust': The American Tax State and Redistribution"
Highlighting the attitudinal and institutional foundations of regime legitimacy, Charles Tilly argues that inequality exists because some control the success chances of others; inequality persists because these relations become embedded features of social life. In democratic theory, voters decide how much inequality to tolerate. In practice however, contextual, institutional, and organizational factors affect the voting decision itself and the transmission of election results into policy. I employ both individual-level variation in tax attitudes and state-level variation in tax policy to explain why American redistribution effort has declined during recent decades of sharply rising inequality.
At the individual level, I use newly available national survey data to examine how tax attitudes respond to ethnoracially diverse contexts. Here, I examine the diversity effect on individual fiscal trust in government and how this effect varies by liberal or conservative ideology. In addition, using data I collected on a recent tax referendum in Washington State, I investigate how the framing of tax issues in public discourse affects voter support for redistributive policies. Finally, I develop a measure of actual voter support from publicly available election data.
While federal tax progressivity has declined, noticeable state-level differences in tax policy persist. Using a new time series of American state-level tax progressivity that I construct, I test several hypothesized political, institutional, and organizational determinants of redistribution effort. I also use this data set to examine whether tax rate structure subsequently affects the redistributive character of state expenditure policies. Notably, these analyses control for national-level variables, such as war and political culture, that have threatened prior comparative research. Not only does the state-level data set provide this theoretical and methodological advantage, but it also has broader relevance for public policy. With declining welfare effort at the federal level, state-level tax and expenditure policies are an increasingly important component of overall redistribution.
Publications
"Millionaire Migration and State Taxation of Top Incomes: Evidence from a Natural Experiment" (with Cristobal Young). National Tax Journal 64:255–284, June 2011
Trends in New Jersey Migration: Housing, Employment, and Taxation (with Douglas S. Massey and Cristobal Young). Princeton: Policy Research Institute for the Region, 2008
"Resistance to Cultural Globalization—A Comparative Analysis" (with Miguel Centeno and Laura Adams). In Helmut Anheier and Yudhishthir Raj Isar, eds. The Cultures and Globalization Series 1: Conflicts and Tensions. London: Sage Publications, 2007
Under Review
"'Suburbia as We Know It': Rhetoric and Cognition in Diversifying Communities" (with Mike Owen Benediktsson)
Work in Progress
"School Diversity and the Development of Interracial Regard"
"Suburban Reserves of Group Position: The Ethnoracial Elements of Undocumented Immigrant Exclusion"
"Top Income Taxation and Migration in the States" (with Cristobal Young)
Popular Press
“Do The Rich Flee High-Tax States?”, National Public Radio Talk Money and Morning Edition, April 22, 2011
"Will tax increase make millionaires flee Minnesota?", Minnesota Public Radio, February 24, 2011
“Call the Millionaire’s Bluff” (with Cristobal Young). New York Daily News, October 27, 2008
Selected Grants and Awards
2011 National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant
2010 ASA Public Sociology Section Best Student Paper
2005 (awarded) National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship
Teaching Experience
Sociology 364, Sociology of Medicine (with Elizabeth Armstrong)
Sociology 301, Claims and Evidence in Sociology (with King-To Yeung)
Sociology 101, Introduction to Sociology (with Patricia Fernandez-Kelly)
Teaching Interests
Stratification and Inequality, Political Sociology, Research Methods and Causality, Fiscal Sociology, Statistics, Race and Ethnicity, Urban Sociology, Sociology of Medicine
For More Information
http://www.princeton.edu/~varner
Scott Leon Washington
Education
PhD, Princeton University, Sociology, 2011
MA, Princeton University, Sociology/Demography, 2003
BA, University of California, Berkeley, Sociology/Philosophy (Departmental Valedictorian, Phi Beta Kappa), 2000
Research Interests
Stratification and Inequality, Sociology of Law, Sociology of Culture, Political Sociology, Organizations, Comparative and Historical Sociology, Demography, Research Methods, Sociological Theory, Race and Ethnicity
Dissertation
Title: “Hypodescent: A History of the Crystallization of the One-Drop Rule in the United States, 1880-1940”
Committee: Paul DiMaggio (chair), Paul Starr, Edward Telles, K. Anthony Appiah
This dissertation examines the crystallization of the one-drop rule in the United States between 1880 and 1940. The “one-drop rule” is a colloquial expression, a phrase which reflects the belief that a person bearing a trace of African ancestry (literally, a single drop of black or Negro “blood”) is black. Historians and social scientists have tended to assume that, as a principle of classification, the one-drop rule can be traced back to the institution of slavery. This study provides a different account. Using a variety of methods, it attempts to explain how the one-drop rule developed, when it became institutionalized, and why. It also adopts a new approach to the study of race, ethnicity, and nationalism, an approach based largely although by no means exclusively on the work of Pierre Bourdieu. The study in its present form has been limited to five chapters. Chapter One explores the origins and development of the one-drop rule, while Chapter Two provides a detailed reading of the case of Plessy v. Ferguson. Chapter Three provides a quantitative account of the country’s history of anti-miscegenation legislation, while Chapter Four examines the role lynching played in the South as a means of social demarcation. The study ends in Chapter Five with a brief synopsis, an inquiry into the relationship between slavery and democracy, and a nonpartisan look at the legacy of the one-drop rule.
Articles Published or Under Review
“Crossing the Line: A Quantitative History of Anti-Miscegenation Legislation in the United States, 1662-2000,” under review at American Sociological Review.
“The Killing Fields Revisited: Lynching and Anti-Miscegenation Legislation in the Jim Crow South, 1882-1930,” currently being revised for American Journal of Sociology.
“The Blood of Homer Plessy: A Counterfactual Analysis of the Case of Plessy v. Ferguson,” currently being revised for Law and History Review.
Work in Progress
“Principles of Racial Taxonomy”
“The Social Space of the Jim Crow South”
“The Nature and Relevance of Metatheory in the Social Sciences: A Comparative Framework”
“Pierre Bourdieu and the Question of Classification”
Selected Grants and Awards
2006 Graduate Student Paper Award, Law and Society Association
2005 Graduate Prize Fellow, American Academy of Political and Social Science
2005 Harry Frank Guggenheim Foundation Dissertation Fellowship
2004 Edward Shils/James Coleman Memorial Award, American Sociological Association
2004 Reinhard Bendix Graduate Student Paper Award, American Sociological Association
2004 James E. Blackwell Graduate Student Paper Award, American Sociological Association
2004 Graduate Prize Fellow, Center for Human Values, Princeton University
2004 Graduate Prize Fellow, Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs
2003 DBH Foundation Graduate Student Paper Award
2002 Candice Rogers Award, Eastern Sociological Society
2001 Language Study Grant, Council on Regional Studies, Princeton University
2001 Research Grant, Center for African American Studies, Princeton University
2001 Ford Foundation Predoctoral Fellowship, National Research Council
2000 Departmental Citation, Valedictorian, University of California, Berkeley
Teaching Experience
Sociology 223: Contemporary Sociological Theory, 2011
Sociology 221: Classical Sociological Theory, 2010
Sociology 101: Introduction to Sociology, 2009
Sociology 180: Social Classification and Categorization, 2008
Sociology 320: Law and Society, 2005
Sociology 217: Race and Ethnicity, 2005
Additional Information
http://lapa.princeton.edu/peopledetail.php?ID=368