Digital Commons Network^™

Faculty Agency In Applying For Promotion To Professor, Amy Blackstone, Susan K. Gardner

Sociology School Faculty Scholarship

• Aim/Purpose: In the United States, faculty who wish to pursue promotion to the rank of professor do so without clear guidance or structure. Even the timing of such a process is nebulous. As such, an individual engages in magentic action to pursue the rank.
• Background: This study examined the experiences of faculty members who chose to pursue the application process to be promoted to professor but were rejected or dissuaded.
• Methodology: Utilizing a case study of one institutional setting, we conducted 10 in-depth qualitative interviews.
• Contribution: Very little is known about the process of promotion to full professor in the …

"Putting In Your Time" : Faculty Experiences In The Process Of Promotion To Professor, Susan K. Gardner, Amy Blackstone

Sociology School Faculty Scholarship

The rank of professor or “full” professor represents the highest status possible for faculty members, and it is generally gained by attaining professional expertise and a national or international reputation. Beyond this, however, little is known about these individuals or the promotion process at this level. In this qualitative study of 10 faculty members at one research university in the United States, we sought to understand the experiences of individuals who had sought promotion to full professor. Through a socialization lens, we found that issues of time, a lack of clarity, and gender disparity were concerns for these faculty members.

Harassment Of Older Adults In The Workplace, Amy Blackstone

Sociology School Faculty Scholarship

This chapter reviews research on harassment of older adults in the workplace and highlights results from my recent study of harassment of older workers in Maine. I suggest that the power that older people hold at work, at home, and in their communities shapes their workplace harassment experiences. Based on a survey of nearly 200 Maine workers aged 62 and above, four questions framed the study: (1) What is the content of older workers’ harassment experiences?; (2) Which older workers are most likely to become targets of workplace harassment?; (3) How do older workers respond to potentially harassing behaviors?; and …

Choosing To Be Childfree: Research On The Decision Not To Parent, Amy Blackstone, Mahala Dyer Stewart

Sociology School Faculty Scholarship

Decisions about whether to have or rear children, as well as perceptions of people who choose not to parent are linked to a variety of social processes and identities. We review literature from a variety of disciplines that focuses on voluntarily childless adults. Early research in this area, emerging in the 1970s, focused almost exclusively on heterosexual women and utilized a childless rather than a childfree framework. Later work saw a shift to a “childless-by-choice” or “childfree” framework, emphasizing that for some, not being parents is an active choice rather than an accident. While more recent research includes lesbian women …

Choosing To Be Childfree: Research On The Decision Not To Parent, Amy Blackstone, Mahala Dyer Stewart

Sociology School Faculty Scholarship

Decisions about whether to have or rear children, as well as perceptions of people who choose not to parent are linked to a variety of social processes and identities. We review literature from a variety of disciplines that focuses on voluntarily childless adults. Early research in this area, emerging in the 1970s, focused almost exclusively on heterosexual women and utilized a childless rather than a childfree framework. Later work saw a shift to a “childless-by-choice” or “childfree” framework, emphasizing that for some, not being parents is an active choice rather than an accident. While more recent research includes lesbian women …

The Impact Of Sexual Harassment On Depressive Symptoms During The Early Occupational Career, Jason N. Houle, Jeremy Staff, Jeylan T. Mortimer, Christopher Uggen, Amy M. Blackstone

Sociology School Faculty Scholarship

Sexual harassment has been theorized as a stressor with consequences for the physical and mental health of its targets. Although social scientists have documented a negative association between sexual harassment and mental health, few longitudinal studies have investigated the association between sexual harassment and depressive symptoms. Using longitudinal survey data from the Youth Development Study, combined with in-depth interviews, this article draws on Louise Fitzgerald’s theoretical framework, stress theory, and the life course perspective to assess the impact of sexual harassment on depressive affect during the early occupational career. In support of Fitzgerald’s model, the authors’ findings confirm that sexual …

Doing Good, Being Good, And The Social Construction Of Compassion, Amy Blackstone

Sociology School Faculty Scholarship

Activists and volunteers in the United States face the dilemma of having to negotiate the ideals of American individualism with their own acts of compassion. In this article, I consider how activists and volunteers socially construct compassion. Data from ethnographic research in the breast cancer and antirape movements are analyzed. The processes through which compassion is constructed are revealed in participants’ actions and in their identities. It is through their actions (or “doing good”) and their perceptions and presentations of themselves (“being good”) that participants construct compassion as a gendered phenomenon. Together, the processes of doing good and being good …

Gender Roles And Society, Amy M. Blackstone

Sociology School Faculty Scholarship

Gender roles are based on the different expectations that individuals, groups, and societies have of individuals based on their sex and based on each society's values and beliefs about gender. Gender roles are the product of the interactions between individuals and their environments, and they give individuals cues about what sort of behavior is believed to be appropriate for what sex. Appropriate gender roles are defined according to a society's beliefs about differences between the sexes.

Racial Prejudice And Support By Whites For Police Use Of Force : A Research Note, Steven E. Barkan, Steven F. Cohn

Sociology School Faculty Scholarship

The use of force by police in a democratic society continues to be controversial. Despite the theoretical and practical importance of police use of force, little is known about the sources of public attitudes toward it. Recent research suggests that whites' approval of police use of force may derive partly from racial prejudice against African Americans. In this paper we test this possibility with data from the 1990 General Social Survey and find that negative stereotypes of African Americans contribute to whites' support for police use of excessive force. We also address the theoretical and pragmatic significance of our findings.

Teaching About Domestic Violence : Strategies For Empowerment, Saundra Gardner

Sociology School Faculty Scholarship

The burgeoning literature on feminist pedagogy has led many of us to examine critically not only what we teach in our courses, but how we teach. Struggling to create a learning environment that empowers all students, feminist faculty have been particularly concerned with the structure and dynamics of the classroom, the personal and emotional impact of course materials, and the development of teaching methods that facilitate personal and social change. While such concerns are certainly germane to any feminist classroom, I believe they are particularly salient in courses that center on sensitive topics such as domestic violence. The emotional intensity …

Gay Movements And Legal Change: Some Aspects Of The Dynamics Of A Social Problem, Steven F. Cohn, James E. Gallagher

Sociology School Faculty Scholarship

This paper examines public opinion and media coverage surrounding four important events which affected the development of homosexual rights in Maine in the 1970s: the birth of a homosexual student group on a University of Maine campus and the conference it organized; the adoption of a gay rights plank in the election platform of the state's Democratic Party; revisions to the state's criminal code which decriminalized homosexual activities; and a second conference organized by the student group. Only the first event aroused major public outcry. We describe these events in detail, examine how the media covered them, and analyze why …