Concentration in Gender and Sexuality Studies in the Department of Sociology
Gender is an important analytic category in just about all fields of the social sciences.
Gender scholarship in the Yale Sociology department spans a wide array of substantive issues
and theoretical and methodological approaches. Faculty work ranges from the micro-social
construction of masculinities and femininities in everyday life to the gendered development of
large-scale institutions like the market economy, the public sphere, law, and the modern state.
Among other things, our research and teaching deal with the causes and consequences of gender
identities and inequality in the context of families, communities, organizations and nation-states,
covering diverse societies such as the Americas; European countries; China and Southeast Asia.
Some of us study the gender dimensions of the transformation of global social and cultural
networks.
We are also interested in how gendered social structures and identities shape men’s and women’s
life course transitions, behavior, and outcomes. In particular, we have strong interests in the
relationship of gender identity and sexuality; adolescent development; educational attainment;
careers; family formation and fertility; health, and political action and participation.
The intersection of gender with other social categories and processes involving race, ethnicity
and class, and the challenging question of the relationship of gender to biological sex differences,
animates some of our recent writings.
Our work has inspired us, whether as members of the Women’s Faculty Forum or other
organizations, to promote gender scholarship and gender equity at Yale and beyond.
Faculty
Julia Adams
Sex and gender are core dimensions of just about all social phenomena. My own research has
highlighted the gender-specific aspects of large-scale political transformation, and I have focused
on both pre-modern and contemporary societies. The changing historical formations of
masculinity are especially interesting to me, in part because they remain a relatively understudied
and ill-understood area of social structure and social psychology. I also teach and write on the
relationship between gender as a conceptual lens and social theory.
Hannah Brueckner
I work on a wide range of topics related to the life course, inequality, health, and sexuality. A
series of co-authored papers on adolescent sexuality speaks to the debate on abstinence-only sex
education. I have published a book (“Gender Inequality in the Life Course”) and numerous
chapters and articles about gender inequality in the labor force and in retirement, and the
integration of women in academic workplaces. This work informs my activities to promote
gender equity at Yale as a member of the steering committee of the Women Faculty Forum.
Averil Clarke
REVISING
Deborah Davis
Since my dissertation I have placed questions about variation and inequalities by generation and
gender at the core of my research. Initially gender functioned primarily as a control variable, but
over time it has became a pivot for construction of meaning and explaining larger societal
cleavages. Similarly issues of gender equity have been central to me as an administrator and
currently guide me in my work as co-chair of Yale's Women Faculty Forum.
Vida Maralani
My research focuses on the role that educational attainment plays in producing or shaping
inequality both within and across generations. These questions are particularly interesting as they
relate to women’s schooling. Increases in women’s schooling represent one of the most
fundamental and wide-reaching socioeconomic changes of recent decades. In both developing
and developed countries, policy makers promote increases in women’s schooling as a way to
improve the lives of women and children and upgrade the educational distribution of future
generations. I examine the connections between women’s education and demographic processes
such as marriage, fertility, and mortality and study the intergenerational effects of increasing
women’s schooling. I combine traditional approaches to social mobility research with formal
demographic approaches for population projection and show how intergenerational effects of
increasing women’s schooling differ across cohorts, countries, and race/ethnic groups. More
broadly, I am also interested in gender and schooling both within and across cohorts and gender
and health.
Alondra Nelson
My research applies interdisciplinary social science approaches, including ethnography,
historical analysis, and theory, to the examination of how science, technology and medicine
shape identity, politics and culture. My interests include the historical and socio-cultural studies
of science, technology, and medicine; racial formation processes in biomedicine and
technoculture; social movements; and social and cultural theory. My current research involves an
ethnographic study of men’s and women’s traditional and genetic “root-seeking” practices and
the implications of these practices for contemporary understandings of race and ethnicity,
diaspora, gender, kinship, and memory.
Courses
* SOCY015, Social Relations and Society.
* SOCY115, Contemporary American Society.
* SOCY121, The Sociological Imagination.
* SOCY143, Race and Ethnicity.
* SOCY210, Sociology of the Welfare State.
* SOCY214, Gender Inequality.
* SOCY224, Marriage and Family.
* SOCY314, Social Inequality.
* SOCY385, Race, Gender and the African-American Experience.
* SOCY536, Colonialism and Empire.
* SOCY542, Sociological Theory.
* SOCY557, Political Sociology.
Links
Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at Yale
Women’s Faculty Forum
WFF report Women, Men, and Yale University: A View from 2007
Sociologists for Women in Society