Hello and welcome to my personal page! I am a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at Duke University (PhD expected May 2010).
My research and teaching interests include:
- Ethnicity and Race
- Sexuality and Gender
- Cultural Sociology
- Visual Sociology
My research interests focus on how symbols affect group organization. I employ a comparative historical analysis of group membership narratives to understand how cultural meanings are used to define group boundaries. Since my interests are in present day uses of narratives, my methodological approach uses participant observation and interviews to further elucidate how individuals engage with larger institutional frameworks where both the micro and macro influence and shape cultural meanings and symbols. I also consider myself a visual sociologist and use images and commodities as methodological tools as well as create documentary films along with scholarly publications to broaden the possible audience for sociological work.
My dissertation compares the role of homeland tourism for the creation of imagined communities. I examine how homeland tourism shapes the socially constructed definitions and boundaries that are imagined by the people who perceive themselves as being part of that group. I explore these emergent forms of subjectivity, citizenship and mobilization in three cases: American Jews traveling to Israel on Birthright, African-Americans experiencing slavery/heritage tourism in Ghana, and families with adopted Chinese daughters traveling to China. With this dissertation I merge multiple post-modern theories on diaspora, globalization and nationalism highlighting the shifting nature of knowledge focusing on how experience shapes understanding about one’s community.
Please take a look around my website.