“Kiss Me, I’m Irish American”
“Kiss My I’m Irish”? How about, “Kiss Me I’m Irish American”? In this post, Stephanie Medley-Rath explains how St. Patrick’s Day celebrations can be a practice in symbolic ethnicity. In March, we...
View ArticleDoing Gender: A Sociologist Visits Sephora
What does make-up have to do with professional womahood? In this post, Stephanie Medley-Rath visits Sephora and learns that her ability to do professional womanhood is questionable. A few weeks ago, I...
View ArticleWhy Did The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge Become a Movement?
At this point, if you haven’t heard about the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge, you may want to check your pulse. For the past several weeks, Facebook news feeds have been clogged with videos of folks dumping...
View ArticleWhat Your Fridge Says about Your Social Class?
What does the contents of your refrigerator say about your social class? In this post, Stephanie Medley-Rath explains how the contents of a fridge might indicate something about one’s social class...
View Article“Trick-or-Treat, Smell My Feet”: How to “Do Halloween”
How do you “do Halloween?” In this post, Stephanie Medley-Rath describes the conflicting messages she received from her family, her peers, and the media about how to celebrate Halloween. Please accept...
View ArticleDon’t Yuck my Yum: Food & Ethnocentricity
It’s easy to judge other cultures as being weird or gross, but doing so limits our ability to understand them. In this piece Nathan Palmer uses food preferences to illustrate how every culture has...
View ArticleIn The U.S. We Live Long, But Die Hard
In this essay, April Schueths examines how death is treated in American culture and asks us to consider how we could make death and dying easier in the U.S. “Don’t touch that body, it’s disrespectful,”...
View ArticleWhen (not) to Talk About Money
In this piece, Sarah Ford examines the process of socialization in to norms about money. Recently I was at dinner with my family and a friend’s family. During our weekly family dinner date, my...
View ArticleThe Lasting Effects of Having a Teacher Mispronounce Your Name
In this piece Nathan Palmer discusses how students having their names mispronounced by their teachers can affect their learning and academic success. .embed-container { position: relative;...
View ArticleA Sociologist Visits an Art Museum: Race, Art, and Selfies
When a sociologist visits an art museum, what do they see? In this instance, Stephanie Medley-Rath connects the racial composition of the place to the artwork on display and the photography behavior of...
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