News
Why is Taylor Swift so popular? (Opens in new window)
What lengths would you go to for your favourite musician? Hours spent refreshing a web page? Queuing in the rain for a meet-and-greet? If you could see yourself camping for five months outside a venue to get the best seats at their show, then that’s exactly what a group of...
Why is Taylor Swift so popular? (Opens in new window)
What lengths would you go to for your favourite musician? Hours spent refreshing a web page? Queuing in the rain for a meet-and-greet? If you could see yourself camping for five months outside a venue to get the best seats at their show, then that’s exactly what a group of...
Why is Taylor Swift so popular? (Opens in new window)
What lengths would you go to for your favourite musician? Hours spent refreshing a web page? Queuing in the rain for a meet-and-greet? If you could see yourself camping for five months outside a venue to get the best seats at their show, then that’s exactly what a group of...
Kansas professors/fans: Musician Taylor Swift poised to raise political voice in 2024 (Opens in new window)
Professional musician and novice Kansas City Chiefs enthusiast Taylor Swift avoided flexing her artistry on the political stage during the 2016 presidential contest between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton. ...
Red Hot Research returns for its 12th year
LAWRENCE — Red Hot Research returns for three sessions this fall, offering a fast-paced, presentation-style event from The Commons at the University of Kansas as a way of introducing colleagues to one another. ...
Paul Stock co-authored "You're Asking Me to Put into Words Something That I Don't Put into Words": Climate Grief and Older Adult Environmental Activists (Opens in new window)
Globally, climate change is leading to environmental crises, which activists have been fighting against for decades. Social scientists have rarely considered older adults as environmentalists and their feelings about climate change. Most studies focus on younger people’s emotions or concerns about environmental crises. The purpose of this study is to...
Liz Felix Selected for the Inaugural Fostering Research Expansion in the Social Sciences (Opens in new window)
The FRESSH Program is designed to help scholars in the arts, social sciences, and humanities in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences apply for and obtain external funding for their research. The program will consist of workshops during the 2023-24 academic year during which scholars will work with invited...
When Pop Stars Take Over the Classroom (Opens in new window)
Brian Donovan's article "Baldness and Civilization: Alopecia and the Social Construction of Race in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era" was published in the Journal of Bodies, Sexualities, and Masculinities (Opens in new window)
In late-nineteenth and early-twentieth-century America, doctors, scientists, and social commentators amplified concerns that white men were going bald at an alarming rate. Theories of baldness in the Gilded Age and Progressive Era created and relied on racial distinctions. This article examines the role of baldness and perceptions of baldness in...
Taylor Swift is 'in a class of her own right now' as Eras tour gives way to Eras movie (Opens in new window)
KU chancellor announces promotion and tenure for 163 faculty and researchers
LAWRENCE — Chancellor Douglas A. Girod has approved the promotion and award of tenure, where indicated, for 64 individuals at the University of Kansas Lawrence and Edwards campuses and 99 individuals at the KU Medical Center campuses. ...
An intrastate study-abroad trip visits the foreign land of Kansas (Opens in new window)
Jarron St. Onge receives funding from the National Science Foundation, 2023-2025
Jarron St. Onge is the Co-Principal Investigator (KU is primary institution -- Sociology and Ecology & Evolutionary Biology -- with George Mason, North Carolina-Greensboro, University of Puerto Rico) for the National Science Foundation, 2023-2025. (PI: Agusto) “Project INSIGHT: INclusion of challenges from Social Isolation Governed by Human behavior through Transformative...
Taylor Swift and her fans are such a phenomenon, this KU professor is studying them (Opens in new window)
Earlier this month Brian Donovan, a sociology professor at the University of Kansas, made a TikTok to recruit people for his study of Taylor Swift fans. He couldn’t offer them money but promised “we’ll have a good conversation.”...
Can’t ‘Shake It Off’? University of Kansas class will explore Taylor Swift’s popularity (Opens in new window)
Like many “Swifties,” University of Kansas sociology professor Brian Donovan first became a Taylor Swift fan in 2013, upon the release of her album “1989.”...
Andrew Taeho Kim receives Postdoctoral Fellow at the Population Studies Center, Univ. of Pennsylvania (Opens in new window)
Andrew Taeho Kim’s research centers on the various facets of labor market inequality, including how economic returns from the labor market are stratified based on race, gender, and family. He received Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology at the University of Kansas. His work appears in Social Science Research, Population...
SOC 450 "Gender and Society" developed as a Research-Intensive Course
Assistant Teaching Professor Kelly Sharron has developed SOC 450 as a Research-Intensive Course with a mini grant from the Center for Undergraduate Research. Students will be presenting their work in the Undergraduate Research Symposium April 17-21, 2023. ...
ChangHwan Kim co-authored "Is hyper-selectivity a root of Asian American Children's Success?" (Opens in new window)
Asian immigrants' children, even those from lower-backgrounds, tend to acquire higher levels of education than other ethnoracial groups, including White natives. Asian culture is often cited as a conventional explanation. The hyper-selectivity hypothesis challenges conventional wisdom by arguing that Asian American culture is an outcome of the community resources associated...
Brian Donovan, Chair Elect 2023, delivered his presidential address, “The Inevitability and Promise of Historical Sociology” at the 2023 MSS annual meeting in Minneapolis
The MSS Annual Meeting dedicated to building community among sociologists and to advancing sociological knowledge, teaching, and practice for social scientific purposes and social betterment, provides engaging forums for the sharing, critique, dissemination, and application of social scientific knowledge, including through its annual meeting and its journal, The Sociological Quarterly. ...
Brian Donovan's Presidential Address at the 2023 MSS Annual Meeting in Minneapolis was published in The Sociological Quarterly (Opens in new window)
As sociologists, we engage in history whether or not we see ourselves, professionally, as historical sociologists. These remarks discuss the varieties of ways sociologists use and approach historical scholarship, including history-as-context, analytic comparative/historical sociology, and interpretive approaches. I also reflect on the first fifty years of Midwest Sociological Society to...
ChangHwan Kim co-authored "Network Ties, Upward Status Heterophily, and Unanticipated Health Consequences" (Opens in new window)
ChangHwan Kim co-authored "Changing Undergraduate Funding Mix and Graduate Degree Attainment" (Opens in new window)
Previous studies of the role of college students’ funding sources in their educational outcomes have focused on individual funding sources and have not paid much attention to the mixing of multiple sources. As rising college tuition has heightened the financial burden on college students, the use of multiple funding sources...
Gerald K. McCannon, Lisa-Marie Wright and Angie Hendershot (Assoc. Prof. of the Practice, Journalism) receive small Grant
Kevin McCannon, Lisa-Marie Wright, and Angie Hendershot (Associate Professor of the Practice, Journalism) received a combination of $1,250 in support from the KU-Edwards Research Small Grant fund and the School of Journalism Rapid Response Fund for their qualitative study on how first-generation and non-tenure track sociology faculty manage their sense...
Kelly H. Chong receives GRF
Sociology Chair Kelly H. Chong received the GRF for documentary in-progress, "Invisibility and Rage: Asian Americans, Racial Trauma, and Mental Health." ...
KU Sociology Department ranked in the top 50 among public universities in 2022
Rankings reported from the U.S. News & World Report. ...
Tracey LaPierre and colleagues publish "Anything that Benefits the Workers Should Benefit the Client" (Opens in new window)
Self-directed care (SDC) models allow Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) consumers to direct their own care, thus supporting flexible, person-centered care. There are many benefits to the SDC model but access to resources is essential to successful outcomes. Considering the autonomy and flexibility associated with SDC, it is important...
Matt Erickson wins the IPUMS CPS Research Awards with his paper in Social Forces (Opens in new window)
This study examines a possible connection between shifting gender and family norms and declining internal migration. Using data from the 1989–1998 and 2009–2018 Annual Social and Economic Supplements of the Current Population Survey, we examine whether co-breadwinner married couples have become less likely to migrate within the US relative to...
Matt Erickson co-authors article "Tied Staying on the Rise? Declining Migration Among Co-Breadwinner Couples in the United States, 1990s to 2010s" (Opens in new window)
Annual Social and Economic Supplements of the Current Population Survey, we examine whether co-breadwinner married couples have become less likely to migrate within the US relative to couples with a sole or primary breadwinner. We find a general U-shaped association between wives’ share of a married couple’s income and that...
Kevin McCannon nominated by Fac ex to serve as Chair
Kevin McCannon was nominated by FacEx to be on the Teaching Professor Policy Ad Hoc Committee, which is supported by the Office of Faculty Affairs. This committee is charged to develop policy recommendations for the Teaching Professor title series by the end of this year. Keeping equity, accessibility, consistency, and...
ChangHwan Kim co-authors "Employment Transitions among Older Americans during the Initial Lockdown and Early Reopening Months of the COVID-19 Recession" (Opens in new window)
This study examines the employment status of older Americans in the months immediately before and after the peak COVID-19 lockdown in April 2020. The authors construct longitudinal employment data from 2019–2020 Current Population Surveys. To account for seasonal fluctuations in employment and retirement patterns that are not unique to the...