Graduate Sociology at UAlbany

Areas of Specialization: Gender Studies

The Graduate Program in the Department of Sociology has major strengths in gender studies. Several faculty members focus the majority of their research on issues of gender and have strong ties with the Women's Studies Department. Many others pursue research that includes gender issues. Students may take any of the following relevant courses and may choose to focus on gender for one of their specialization examinations at the doctoral level or for a master's thesis or dissertation topic.

Gender Courses in the Sociology Department

• Global Gender Inequalities
• Race, Gender, and Work
• Gender, Crime and Justice
• Intersections: Race, Gender, Class, Sexuality  

Sociology courses in related areas

• Children and Public Policy
• Families
• Family and Household Demography
• Queer Theory
• Social Psychology
• Sociology of Work
• Social Interaction Processes
• Stratification

Students may register for Soc 606 Coteaching Internship and coteach a course on gender at the undergraduate level.

Women's Studies Department
The Women's Studies program began in 1971, and in 1989 it became a department. It encompasses faculty with core appointments, joint appointments, and affiliated faculty, representing many different departments across the campus. It offers a major, a minor, a MA in Women’s Studies, a graduate certificate in Women and Public Policy (see below), and is developing joint graduate endeavors with disciplinary departments (including the recently-approved joint Women’s Studies MA/Sociology PhD, see below). The Women's Studies department offers a wide range of courses that allow students to reexamine traditional disciplines from a feminist perspective and to develop new trans-disciplinary approaches to the study of women. Many students in Sociology with interests in Gender pursue the Women’s Studies MA along with their PhD in Sociology, either as part of the official joint program or more informally under cooperative agreements between the two departments.

Combined M.A. Women's Studies/PhD Sociology Program
The combined M.A Women’s Studies /PhD Sociology program is the outcome of longstanding cooperation and overlapping strengths between the Departments of Sociology and Women’s Studies.  It allows Sociology PhD students with interests in Gender Studies and Women’s Studies students with sociological interests to combine their work in these two programs.  This is facilitated by the number of joint and affiliated faculty shared between the two departments, as well as by graduate-level cross-listed coursework.  It is also facilitated by the willingness of both departments to allow requirements for one program to be included as a portion of the coursework for the other program. 

Students in the Joint program will fulfill requirements for both degrees.  The Women’s Studies M.A. requires a total of 32 credits, including several core courses, a Master’s project, and elective courses forming a cohesive cluster.  The Sociology PhD program requires a total of 60 credits (plus the dissertation), including several core courses, a Teaching Tool, a Research Tool, and two comprehensive area exams.  Cooperative agreements between the Departments allow the Sociology comprehensive exam in Gender to meet the Women’s Studies Master’s project requirement.  The Women’s Studies core courses are allowed to count as credit toward the Sociology PhD, and the Women’s Studies Research Seminar (a core course) may count as the Research Tool for the PhD.  Electives, including courses that are cross-listed, listed in either department, or in other departments, may count toward both degrees as approved by the Graduate Directors. 

Applicants will be reviewed by the Graduate Directors and Committees of both departments.  In order to be considered for financial assistance, applications must be received by January 15.  Applications for the joint program can also be considered after entry into either program.

Certificate Program on Women and Public Policy
The graduate Certificate Program on Women and Public Policy is designed both for students currently enrolled in public policy-related graduate programs, who may pursue this certificate in conjunction with an MA, MS, or PhD program at Albany, or for members of the community who wish to upgrade their skills and enroll in a self-standing program. It prepares participants to influence public policy affecting women through advocacy, research, elective office, community organization, administration, and policy analysis. The requirements for this multi-disciplinary 18 credit minimum program include two core seminars, Feminist Thought and Public Policy and Women and Public Policy; one course on policy issues from one of the participating departments; one course on skills affecting the public policy process; one policy reasoning course; and the Colloquium in Public Affairs and Policy.

Institute for Research on Women
The Institute for Research on Women (IROW) was founded in 1987 to bring together specialists from a wide variety of disciplines to engage in individual or collaborative research on women. IROW faculty associates come from many departments across the campus and represent several interdisciplinary interest areas: international and cross-cultural studies of women; racial ethnic women in the U.S.; women, work and organizations; women, literature and art; women and science; and family and employment policy.
IROW has sponsored workshops on obtaining funding for research and previously held many conferences, including "Women and Development" (1989), "Integrating Class, Race, and Gender into the Curriculum and Research" (1991), and "Women in the Global Economy" (1994); and had a project on “Gender Studies in Global Perspective,” all with the support of grants from the Ford Foundation and other agencies.  More recently, IROW serves as a network for faculty with gender focused research interests.

Graduate Students
A number of graduate students are involved in research on gender and many have completed dissertations in this area. Topics include:

• Emotion Work in Women’s Abortion Experiences
• The Making of Immigrant Entrepreneurs: Gendered Processes of Korean Small Business Ownership
• Globalization and Gender: Exploring the Effects of Welfare Reform in Puerto Rico
• Professional Commitments and Political Identities: Challenges for Feminist Academic Sociologists
• When Women Need Care: How Breast Cancer “Survivors” Cope with Being Care-Receivers
• Determinants of Son Preference in India and Health Outcomes for Children
• Straight Trouble: Gendered and Racial Heterosexuality in the Context of Gay and LesbianVisibility
• The “Condom Lady” Speaks: Female Sexuality Discourses and HIV Prevention in Community-Based Organizations
• Work flexibility, work culture, and gender
• The Challenges and Rewards of Sisterhood: An Exploration of Women’s Experiences in Black Sororities.
• Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Black Women, A Century in the Bottom Class, 1860-1960
• Gendered International Marriage Migration under Globalization: Filipina Wives in South Korean Rural Communities
• Exploring a Culture of Intimacy: Individualism and solidarity in heterosexual relationships
• More than a Gender Issue: Integrating Race into the Analysis of Work-Family Balance among Dual-Earner Couples
• Creating Meaning in Engagement: Gender, Heterosexuality, and Commitment to Marriage
• Modern Day Mary Poppins:  Uncovering the Work of Nannies and the Expectations of Employers
• Leisure Throughout the Trajectory of Motherhood: A Life Course Approach
• Women in a Man's World: The Experiences of Women in Landscaping

Faculty in Gender

Christine E. Bose
Ph.D. Johns Hopkins University
Professor Bose holds joint appointments in the Departments of Women’s Studies and Latin American, Caribbean, and US Latino Studies, along with her primary appointment in Sociology. She was the 2011 President of the Eastern Sociological Society, the 2006 President of Sociologists for Women in Society (2006), and Editor of the journal Gender & Society (2000-03). Her interest areas are US and global gender inequalities, stratification and labor market issues, international development and migration, and race/ethnicity differences among women. She has published in the areas of occupational prestige and status attainment, women’s employment as it varies by ethnicity, the social impact of household technology, women’s work at the turn of the century (1900), gender and development in Latin America, women’s global carework and migration (2006), and global gender research (2009).

Joanna Dreby
Ph.D. CUNY Graduate Center
Professor Dreby’s research interests are in children, gender and families, international migration, transnational processes, ethnographic and qualitative methods, and community studies. Her most recent study explores the ways two of the most salient features of contemporary immigration, legality and new destination settlement, affect the lives of children in Mexican families. Dr. Dreby has published on her previous study about Mexican transnational families in the book Divided by Borders: Mexican Migrants and their Children. She has also published on child-care safety. Dr. Dreby has a background in social services and Latin American studies. She is also especially interested in work family issues.

Kecia Johnson
Ph.D. North Carolina State
Professor Johnson’s research examines how race and gender inequality influence crime and delinquency. Her first area involves the collateral consequences of incarceration for individuals and communities, with a current project focusing on the impact of incarceration on employment and earnings trajectories of African American, Latino and white men. A second area explores the relationship between schools and delinquency, by considering the extent to which stratification and disciplinary practices within schools and individual level characteristics affect delinquency, across race and gender. She teaches courses on the Sociology of Gender; Gender, Crime and Justice; Sociology of Deviant Behavior; and Race/Ethnicity and Crime.

Karyn Loscocco
Ph.D. Indiana University
Professor Loscocco's research focuses on gender, work and family. Past publications have dealt with the work attitudes of blue-collar women and men, the impact of work and family on job attitudes and emotional well-being, and how gendered social processes affect women’s entrepreneurship. Current studies include a U.S. and Italy comparison of work-family systems and women’s work.  Professor Loscocco also studies heterosexual  marriage.  She is interested in cultural constructions of love and marriage, and the ways that gender, race and class combine to affect images and experiences of marriage.  Professor Loscocco is affiliated with the Women’s Studies Department and active in SWS and the Sex and Gender section of ASA.

Steven Seidman
Ph.D. University of Virginia
Professor Seidman works in the areas of theory, sexuality, and the study of empire and nation. He draws considerably from critical gender studies in his general approach to sociology and social analysis. Recently, queer gender scholars such as Butler and Halberstam have informed his thinking about ‘compulsory heterosexuality’ and sexual/gender identity.

Glenna Spitze
Ph.D. University of Illinois
Professor Spitze's research interests include gender and families, intergenerational relations, and paid and unpaid labor. She is co-author of Family Ties: Enduring Relations between Parents and Their Grown Children (winner of the Goode Distinguished Book Award). Her current work focuses on family divisions of paid and unpaid labor, sibling relations, relationships between older parents and adult children, and the role of personal networks in older adults’ health outcomes. She holds a joint appointment in the Women’s Studies Department.

David G. Wagner
Ph.D. Stanford University
Professor Wagner is interested primarily in the explanation of gender inequalities in work groups and other situations in which tasks are performed, particularly as these inequalities are reflected in and affected by differences in status, power, or rewards in the group. His work also focuses on the implications of these status, power and reward differences for our ability to reduce gender inequalities. Professor Wagner is the recipient of both the University’s and the SUNY Chancellor’s 2004 Excellence in Teaching Awards.

-Feb. 2012