Junior Fellows
Alphabetical, by last name
Ateş Altinordu
Yale University
Ateş’ primary areas of interest are citizenship, the incorporation of immigrants, the politics of cultural difference, and ethnicity. He is currently working on a comparative study of the headscarf controversies in Germany, France, and Turkey. (B.A. Sociology, Yale University; M.A. Sociology, Yale University.)
Dominik Bartmański
Yale University
As an undergraduate student I attended Jagiellonian University in Krakow, Poland. I studied sociology and cultural anthropology at the Department of Philosophy and international relations at the Department of Political Science. Under the influence of European humanistic traditions that shaped the intellectual atmosphere there, I became interested in research frameworks that emphasized centrality of culture for social science and hermeneutics as a crucial method. I wrote my master thesis in sociology under the supervision of Professor Piotr Sztompka. I had continued the study of social meanings as an M.A. student at the University of Exeter before I came to the CCS.
I conduct my research within the tradition of interpretive social science. Among many thinkers and researchers who inspired me and continue to be important are Clifford Geertz, Marshall Sahlins, Florian Znaniecki, Michel Foucault and Jeffrey Alexander. Literature remains a profound source of inspiration as well. The list of authors significant for my thinking is, of course, too long to be put here; it includes such figures as Rainer Rilke and Witold Gombrowicz.
My dissertation develops a series of cultural sociological arguments within the subfield of social iconology and visual studies. It is devoted to the meanings of visual transformation of public sphere and place making in post-socialist capital cities of Berlin and Warsaw. Other topics of scholarly interest include intellectual work as cultural performance, social epistemology of cultural trauma, post-socialist transition as postcolonial trauma, and the meanings of travel literature.
Key concepts of my work are – inter alia – icon, iconicity, cityscape, the liminal, the numinous, chronotope, sociotope, totemism, narrative, post-socialist, Ostalgie, modernity, ost-modernity, myth/mythology, netropolis, interpassivity, public sphere, cultural trauma, intelligentsia/intellectuals, performativity, symbolism.
Links:
Sasakawa Fellowship of the Tokyo Foundation at Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
Institute of Sociology at Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland
European Commission, Erasmus Student Exchange Program
University of Exeter, the Centre for European Governance (formerly the Centre for European Studies)
Elizabeth Breese
Yale University
Elizabeth Breese graduated from Wellesley College in 2006 with a major in sociology and a minor in philosophy. She wrote a senior honors thesis on human rights education in the United States Army based on field research conducted at U.S. Army bases and educational sites. Elizabeth’s areas of interest include cultural sociology, trauma theory, and ethnography.
Sorcha Brophy-Warren
Yale University
Thomas Crosbie
Yale University
Sarah Egan
Yale University
Current areas of interest include nationalism and national identity and concurrent effects on citizenship and political legitimacy in the context of multiculturalism. She previously studied broad issues of commercialism and in her masters dissertation, entitled “Class Conflict: The Extent and Nature of Commercial Activities in Primary Schools in the Republic of Ireland,” she explored these issues within a Critical Theory framework. She has taught mature students through distance education at the National Distance Education Centre, Ireland, as well as tutoring undergraduates at UCD. (M.Soc.Sc., National University of Ireland, University College Dublin.)
Jesse Einhorn
Yale University
(B.A. Sociology, Haverford College.)
Rui Gao
Yale University
Rui Gao’s interests include cultural sociology, social theories, media studies, and gender studies. (B.A. English, Beijing Foreign Studies University; M.A. Sociology, University of Notre Dame.)
Alison Gerber
Yale University
Alison Gerber’s primary interests are public space and public life. She is currently working on a comparative study of artists’ unions and professional associations, as well as papers on social theory and social problems. She studied at the University of Minnesota, the University of Iceland, Malmö Art Academy / Lund University, and the Royal University College of Fine Arts in Stockholm.
Caroline Gray
Yale University
Carrie Gray is interested in disability studies, the sociology of the body, and the cultural meanings of disability and bodily differences. Her research focuses on contrasting societal responses to the problem of disability and incorporation, ranging from genetic modification and medical cures to multicultural identity movements among disabled groups. (B.A. Sociology and Gender Studies, University of California, Davis; M.A. Sociology, University of California, Los Angeles.)
Jeffrey Guhin
Yale University
Jeffrey Guhin graduated from Loyola University New Orleans in 2003 with degrees in English Literature and Sociology. While living in New York City, he worked as caseworker in the South Bronx and taught high school in downtown Brooklyn.
He is attempting to develop a sociological understanding of irony that is faithful to literary theory and capable of explaining a few interesting social problems: Why do so many contemporary urban cosmopolitans find earnestness so embarrassing, and how is this related to their political engagements? What are the differences between concepts like the ironic, the carnival, the jester, and the trickster, and what are the social roles these have played historically and comparatively? How have these roles changed, and how do these changes upset or enable contestations of power? He is also interested in contemporary debates on secularity and tradition, particularly in their relationship to high school education and literature instruction. Can a school enable students to participate in a society’s common civil project while still allowing them to develop within their separate traditions? Does education within a secular society automatically prevent the Aristotelian formation so important to many of these traditions? Because of the interdisciplinary nature of much of this work, he is also interested in a qualitative methodology that would give cultural analysis an explanatory heft without a dependence on reductive materialism. He studies Arabic, Spanish, and French.
Bernadette Nadya Jaworsky
Yale University
Nadya completed her B.A. in Sociology and American Studies at Wellesley College (2005, summa cum laude). She is the Fanny Bullock Workman Fellow for 2005-2006 as well as a Junior Fellow of the Academy of Political and Social Science. She received departmental honors for her Sociology thesis, an ethnographic case study of two religious organizations using cultural pragmatics. Prior to that, she conducted research on American patriotism in the post-9/11 context, over the course of two summers with funding from Wellesley College and the National Science Foundation. In addition to cultural sociology, organizations, and American political culture, her interests include the sociology of religion and transnational studies. In particular, she seeks to probe the relationship(s) between religion, ethnicity, and citizenship—in other words, the boundaries of “belonging.” Currently, she is the primary research consultant for Peggy Levitt’s forthcoming book God Needs No Passport: Transnational Religious Life. Jointly, they are working on two related articles—one concerning cultural diffusion and social/symbolic boundaries and another about the transnational nature of American religious life. Under a grant awarded by the Metanexus Institute’s Spiritual Capital Research Program, Nadya will begin work on a three-city study of “spiritual capital” in January 2006, as site coordinator and co-investigator for the Danbury, CT site. The project goal is to examine how immigrants—both established and “new”—utilize this sub-species of social capital. (B.A. Sociology and American Studies – summa cum laude, Wellesley College.)
Andrew Junker
Yale University
Andy has analytical interests in religion, culture, and politics and regional interests focused on East Asia, especially China. Andy has studied, researched, or worked in Japan, China, Thailand, Nepal and India, including one year researching Japanese and Tibetan artisanship as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow. His foreign language training is in Chinese and Japanese, including intensive study at the Associated Kyoto Program (Dōshisha University, Kyoto), the East Asian Summer Language Institute (Indiana University), and the Inter-University Program for Chinese Language Studies at Tsinghua University (Beijing). At Yale, Andy has used ethnography to explore the interplay of myths, legends and truth claims in the mobilization of an immigrant community. (B.A. East Asian Studies, Wesleyan University; M.A. Religious Studies, Indiana University)
Joseph Klett
Yale University
Joseph Klett is interested in art and aesthetics (with an emphasis on music), new media, human-animal relations, and social movements. His current work is a sociological investigation of ‘noise’ as a sonic, sensual, and social phenomenon. This project includes a genealogical understanding of the concept of noise as developed in cultural negotiations of the sacred and profane (ala Durkeimian theory), noise as otherness in language and action (deconstruction, Bataille), and noise as a sensual category (Simmel, Serres). At the moment, his research considers the paradoxical genre of ‘Noise Music’, as it represents both an inversion of cultural codes and an emergent argument for expanded socialization. In this project and more broadly, Joseph’s work incorporates ideas from critical theory, literary theory, postmodernism, art criticism, aesthetic theory, musicology, and science and technology studies (STS). Previous research has included a study of digitized music consumption on reception, a cultural analysis of the use of torture as response to terrorism, and the coding of non-human animals in the discourse of animal rights. Joseph is a current participant in the Animal Ethics working group at the Yale University Interdisciplinary Center for Bioethics. (B.A. Sociology, University of California, San Diego; M.A. Yale University)
Carolyn Ly
Yale University
Carolyn’s interests include Cultural Sociology, Inequality and Stratification in Education, and Media representations of Race and Ethnicity. Carolyn is currently examining Asian American images in film, and the reception of these images utilizing a cultural perspective (B.A. Sociology, summa cum laude, Hunter College, City University of New York; Phi Beta Kappa).
Tim Malacarne
Yale University
Tim Malacarne graduated from Georgetown University in 2006 with a BS in Foreign Service. His senior honors thesis examined American socio-political divisions and viewing preferences for popular cinema. Tim is interested in the way in which entertainment spectacle both shapes and reflects society and its component groups. He is particularly interested in examining differences between the way this occurs in cosmopolitan and rural areas.
Samuel Nelson
Yale University
(B.A. Sociology honors, University of Chicago.)
Matthew Norton
Yale University
Matthew Norton has focused on a linked series of questions relating to conflict, culture, sentiment, epistemology, and politics in a variety of professional and research settings. He is currently looking at the study of war from the vantage of meaning, the construction and destruction of moral communities, the role of art in enabling solidarity, and the interface of culture and disaster. (B.A. Philosophy, Villanova University; M.A. Conflict Resolution, Bradford University.)
Jensen Sass
Yale University
Prior to coming to Yale, Jensen was at the Social and Political Theory Program of the Australian National University where he completed an MPhil ondeliberative politics. Jensen is currently interested in Pierre Bourdieu’s political theory, the sustainable food movement in the United States, and a range of questions questions concerning the relationship between selfhood and culture.
(B.A. History and Geography (Monash University)
Inge Brooke Schmidt
Yale University
Inge Schmidt graduated from Mount Holyoke College (B.A., Sociology and Politics, cum laude with High Honors). She is interested in Political Sociology and Cultural Sociology, with a focus on American Political Culture. Her senior undergraduate thesis, “The Missing Generation,” focused on changes in youth political participation (or the lack thereof) in the United States following the 2000 Presidential Election and September 11th. Currently, she is interested in political participation and political ritual in the United States. (B.A. Sociology and Politics – cum laude with High Honors, Mount Holyoke College.)
Christine Slaughter
Yale University
Christine Slaughter has interests in the fields of theory, culture, and gender. She is particularly interested in the constitution of identity and solidarity in democratic and multicultural contexts. Her previous work has addressed gender in American political and civil discourse using Nancy Pelosi as a case study. (B.A. Ethics, Politics, & Economics – cum laude, Yale University)
Adrienne Wallace
Yale University
Adrienne is interested in the ways in which democracy matters to people. More concretely she is interested in cultural productions that support democratic principles. Further she is interested in cultural productions that support institutional and other types of violence. Democratic principles have important consequences for issues relating to poverty, choice and violence. Adrienne wishes to examine these consequences with special attention paid to South America and Southern Africa. (B.A. with Honors Mount Holyoke College, cum laude)
Michael Yarbrough
Yale University
Michael Yarbrough works in the areas of law and society; family; the intersection of race, gender, and sexuality; and political subjectivity. He is particularly interested in the roles of law and legal institutions in interpersonal relationships. A recent graduate of the Yale Law School through the joint J.D./Ph.D. program, Michael is currently developing a dissertation comparing marriage reform debates in the United States and South Africa, which seeks to understand the relationship between legal change and changing understandings of family and self. He is also researching small-claims disputes among family members, friends, and others with pre-existing relationships. (B.A. Sociology – honors, University of Chicago; J.D., Yale Law School; M.A., Sociology, Yale University)