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Lecturer

• About

  My areas of expertise are sexualities, gender, deviance and medicalization, and sport. Across these areas I am interested in sexualities and genders as cultural systems of particularized (and changing) ontological assumptions maintained by both everyday life interaction and medical discourse. This nexus informs two lines of research – one on the intertwining of individual identities and lives with cultural forms, the other on medical-therapeutic regulation of sexuality. My book manuscript on “tomboys” uses depth interview data to analyze the gender identity and gender embodiment of individuals who grew up in resistance to traditional femininities. A side project inspired by cultural links between tomboyness and athleticism with homosexuality and gender “disorders” investigates the role of sport in naturalizing our heteronormative gender order. The tomboy work, augmented by NIMH-sponsored training in gender and mental health, led to my newest project, an edited volume on the Sociology of Diagnosis.

• Education

  • Ph.D. Brandeis University, 1995

• Research Areas of Interest

  • Sex and Gender, Sexualities, Deviance, Culture and Knowledge