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Graduate Student Alumna

• Affiliation(s)

  • Joint PhD student with Women's Studies

• About

  Lynn earned her Ph.D. in Sociology and Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and is currently in her second year as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Albion College. Her research investigates how discourses of motherhood are negotiated by women who were low-income and teenaged (i.e., “welfare queens” and “teen moms”) when they became mothers. The findings from her work challenge the discourses, stereotypes and images of good and bad motherhood and, in the process, co-construct (with low-income women) a narrative of the good low-income mother that accounts for the structural and cultural contexts of low-income women’s lives. Lynn approaches teaching from a social justice perspective that can be traced to her experiences as a university/college instructor, an English teacher at an inner-city high school and an advocate for survivors of domestic violence and sexual assault. Her teaching interests include: race and ethnicity; intersections of race, gender, class and sexuality; poverty and inequality; family; sociology of childhood; social research and social theory.

• Education

  • Ph.D. University of Michigan (Sociology & Women's Studies)
  • M.A. University of Michigan (Sociology)
  • B.A. California State University - Fresno (English)

• Research Areas of Interest

  • Intersections of Race, Gender and Class, Sociology of Gender, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Sociology of the Family, Qualitative Methods, Sociology of Sexuality

• Dissertation

  • Charmed Circle of Motherhood: How Motherhood Discourses Discredit and Empower Young and Low-Income Mothers (Karin Martin, Chair)