Graduate Program in Qualitative Sociology
Few departments of sociology currently house adequate concentrations of qualitative scholars to offer graduate training in the theories and methods of this area, leaving many faculty members actively seeking a place to send their best undergraduates and a university from which to hire people schooled in the core of this sub-field. At the University of Colorado, we have one of the largest concentrations of qualitative sociologists, and offer one of the strongest bases for this type of training. Courses offered in Sociology on a regular basis include the following:
Year #1 (e.g., 07-08)
Fall: Qualitative Methods (Tierney)
Spring: Social Psychology (Irvine)Year #2 (e.g., 08-09)
Fall: Qualitative Analysis (Adler)
Spring: Qualitative Writing (Wilkins)
Qualitative Methods
This seminar reviews the definitions, histories, and debates surrounding the practice of ethnographic research as it has evolved in English-speaking contexts. It provides hands-on training in the practical
application of ethnographic methods. Students learn to study contextualized social interaction in a holistic,
interpretive, and ethically responsible manner. Each student also develops a solid portfolio of fieldwork and interview notes.
Qualitative Analysis
This course guides students through basic analytical methods. The seminar begins by assisting students with inductively conceptualizing empirical data into a thematic empirical focus. Students then develop the theoretical implications of these data into a conclusion. Throughout the process, students become familiar with four genres of ethnography: classical ethnography, mainstream ethnography, postmodern ethnography, and pop ethnography, and these are deconstructed to understand their varying audience, voice, rhetoric, and claims.
Social Psychology
This seminar examines how the self and the social world interpenetrate, as well as how individuals influence one another. Includes both experimental and symbolic interactionist approaches, but concentrates on the latter. Discussions focus on questions of the nature of the person, the formation of conduct in everyday life, and the creation of meaning.
Qualitative Writing
The qualitative writing course guides graduate students through the process of preparing qualitative work for publication. Students may be at any stage in the writing process, but the class does not focus on data collection and analysis. Instead, it uses a workshop format to allow students to work together to think through issues of style, voice, authority, representation, and revision. The course prepares students to convey their ideas clearly, persuasively, and in a way that sparks interest.
In addition to the four-course sequence in qualitative research, two courses from the Gender Concentration supplement the Qualitative Curriculum:
Feminist Epistemology and Methods
This seminar considers the development of feminist methodology in the social sciences and the
contemporary discourse on methods, subjectivity, and feminist approaches to qualitative sociology. Readings interrogate the research process from the perspective of fieldwork, participant observation, the compilation of respondent narratives, and the role of the researcher in the research setting. Discussions examine the relationship of the researcher to the research site and the research population. Topics of study include feminist research ethics, the role of empathy and emotion in the research process, the role of the researcher as "insider/outsider," and the structural and power dynamics of ethnographic inquiry. The course also considers how the self as researcher, and the researcher's social location and positionality, inform the research question, the gathering of data, and the interpretation of findings.
Feminist Theory
This seminar introduces contemporary feminist theories, focusing on how interdisciplinary feminist scholars conceived analytic paradigms in the social sciences. This course pays specific attention to the intersections of feminist theory and qualitative research traditions, particularly as these are affected by redefinitions of ideals of objectivity. Examines how knowledge is constructed and deployed in practical case studies; how feminist perspectives challenge and inform methodology; and how feminist analysis reconfigures traditional disciplinary categories through its attention to gender and sex as they are inflected by other identity formations such as class, race, nation, culture, sexual orientation, and age.
The Qualitative Sociology Faculty
Patricia A. Adler (Ph.D., University of California, San Diego, 1984) is Professor of Sociology. Professor Adler is a leading qualitative sociologist who edited the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography for eight years. Her work has been widely included in collections of ethnographic methods published over the last 20 years. Her major research projects have focused on the hedonism and materialism of upper-level drug traffickers, the socialization and role conflict of Division I college athletes, the identity dynamics and peer culture of preadolescents, and the occupational culture and lifestyle of Hawaiian resort workers. Her current project involves self-injury (cutting, burning, branding). Her qualitative specialty is depth participant observation and unstructured life-history interviewing, with particular emphasis on inductive theoretical analysis.
Leslie Irvine (Ph.D., State University of New York at Stony Brook, 1997) is Associate Professor of Sociology and Chair of the Graduate Program. Primarily a social psychologist, Professor Irvine’s research areas include the self, gender, the emotions, and human-animal interaction. Her work has appeared in Qualitative Sociology, Social Problems, Anthrozoös, Society and Animals, and Symbolic Interaction, as well as in edited volumes. Her first book, Codependent Forevermore: The Invention of Self in a Twelve Step Group (1999, University of Chicago Press), focuses on the discourse of “recovery” and how people adapt it to the problems in their lives. Her current work examines relationships between people and companion animals. Her book, If You Tame Me: Understanding Our Connections with Animals (2004, Temple University Press), theorizes the possibility of selfhood among dogs and cats. Professor Irvine's methodological specialties are ethnographic fieldwork, interviewing, and interpretive/inductive analysis. At the graduate level, Professor Irvine teaches Social Psychology and Theory.
Janet Jacobs (Ph.D., University of Colorado, 1985) is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Farrand Residential Academic Program. Her research areas include gender, religion, and social psychology. She is a recognized scholar in the areas of women and religion and culture, ethnicity, and identity. Her current work is focused on cultural memory and the representation of gender. She is author of three books, Divine Disenchantment: Deconverting from New Religious Movements, Victimized Daughters: Incest and the Development of the Female Self, and Hidden Heritage: The Legacy of the Crypto-Jews. Each of these works is based on ethnographic study that employs the methodologies of participant observation, in-depth interview, and the recording of life history narratives.
Joyce McCarl Nielsen (Ph.D. 1972; University of Washington, Seattle) is Professor of Sociology. She addresses feminist epistemology and issues of research methods in her book, Feminist Research Methods: Exemplary Readings in the Social Sciences. Her qualitative empirical work includes papers on student-faculty sexual affairs, cultural themes in gender norm violations, gendered metaphors, and comparisons of quantitative and qualitative analyses.
Isaac Reed (Ph.D., Yale University, 2007) is Assistant Professor of Sociology. His research areas include social theory, cultural sociology, historical sociology, and sex/gender. His work has appeared in Cultural Sociology, Sociological Theory, edited volumes, and in various dictionaries and encyclopedias of sociology. Professor Reed is the co-editor of Culture, Society, and Democracy: The Interpretive Approach (2007, Paradigm Publishers), and of Meaning and Method: The Cultural Approach to Sociology (Forthcoming, Paradigm Publishers). His theoretical work considers the epistemological basis for truth claims in sociology and develops a model of "interpretive explanation" based in the hermeneutic analysis of social meaning and performance. His empirical work focuses on the role of the symbolic—and in particular the symbolization of sex and gender—in the transformation of colonial America. At the graduate level, Professor Reed teaches theory and cultural and historical sociology.
AnnJanette Rosga (Ph.D., University of California, Santa Cruz, 1998) is Assistant Professor of Sociology. Her past research has focused on the semiotics of hate crime among law enforcement officers and other social groups, with a current project examining international human rights training for police in emergent democracies. Professor Rosga's qualitative research is interdisciplinary, drawing on semiotics, discourse analysis, feminist theory, field and participant observation, interviews, text and image analysis, the juxtaposition of different data forms, and socially accountable post-structuralist theory. Her special interest is in multi-site ethnography of urban and/or multicultural conflict. Professor Rosga teaches in the areas of police studies, masculinities, violence and representation, cultural studies, social theory, post-structuralist feminism, critical race theory, law and society, and ethnographic methods.
Sara Steen (Ph.D., University of Washington, 1998) is Associate Professor of Sociology. Her substantive areas of interest include inequalities in the criminal justice system, popular discourse about sentencing reform, and the medicalization of deviance. She is currently conducting qualitative research on the
strategies different states use to reduce their prison populations. Specifically, she is examining how public officials justify moving from being “tough on crime” to being “smart on crime.” Professor Steen combines quantitative and qualitative data and methodologies in approaching her research questions. Her qualitative work has included courtroom observations, the collection and content analysis of information from court documents (including probation reports and prosecutorial case files), content analysis of newspaper articles, and interviews with decision-makers in the juvenile and criminal justice systems.
Kathleen Tierney (Ph.D., Ohio State University, 1979) is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Natural Hazards Research Center. Her main areas of specialization are disasters, hazards, and risk, and collective behavior and social movements. Her qualitative research expertise includes quick-response field research following disasters; in-depth interviewing; qualitative evaluation research; and focus group methods. Her current work focuses on the organizational and community response to the September 11, 2001 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. She teaches the seminar on Qualitative Methods.
Amy Wilkins (Ph.D., University of Massachusetts, 2004) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology. Her substantive areas of interest focus on identities and inequalities. Her research has appeared in Gender & Society, and her book, Goths, Wannabes, and Christians: Gender, Race, Class, and Sexuality in Youth Cultures, is forthcoming from the University of Chicago Press. Her methodological specialties are ethnographic fieldwork and interviewing. Professor Wilkins teaches the Qualitative Writing seminar.
