I’ve always been curious about how culture influences a society. I was born and raised in a small Northern Michigan town on Lake Michigan. When I was ten our local library put a twelve-book limit on the amount of materials that could be checked out during a two-week period. At the time I was reading one Nancy Drew mystery, (the new edition, for those of you in the know), or one Sweet Valley High book a day. My mother struck a deal with the library to allow me fourteen books per checkout, mostly because my need for books was breaking the budget of two social workers. But, she also knew how curious I was about life outside of our small community.
My undergraduate work at Grand Valley State University (GVSU) as a Liberal Studies student was my academic foundation in gender, feminist, and inequality theory. After graduation I worked for three years as the inaugural volunteer coordinator for the GVSU Women’s Center where I also helped find resources for students who had been sexually assaulted.
Beginning with my graduate work in sociology at Virginia Tech in 2005 I have studied the ways inequality is presented in gender and culture. In 2011 I received a Ph.D. in sociology from Western Michigan University. My doctoral research addressed the ways women have used Tori Amos’s music to heal after they’ve experienced trauma. This has led to my most current research on connecting the dots between gender, media, and culture.
I consider myself a public scholar, meaning I believe research should be something done to improve people’s lives. One way this can happen is by sharing what academic do in public spaces. Whether it is through my work, interviews I do with media, or via my podcast, Most Popular, my goal is to bring scholarship to life for as many folks as possible.
To date, I’ve published several books in the area of gender and culture. My most recent publications include the second editions of my books Gender and Pop Culture and Feminist Theory and Pop Culture. I’ve also published in the area of gender and music with The Beyoncé Effect and Sing Us a Song, Piano Woman: Female Fans and the Music of Tori Amos. As a qualitative researcher, I’ve contributed to The Oxford Handbook of Methods for Public Scholarship as well as in the journal Qualitative Research. I have also written about service learning for the book Feminist Pedagogy, Practice, and Activism. As a public scholar, I’ve written for HuffPo, The Orlando Sentinel, The Gender and Society Blog, The Mary Sue, Girl w/ Pen and xoJane. For a full list of my publications, please click here for my CV. For a link to my books, click the Bookstab above.
