Faculty Research Interests

My research primarily focuses on organized labor in America. This work has explored the history and function of AFL-CIO central labor councils. This historical work ultimately led to research on contemporary labor councils and a co-edited book that has become the authoritative text on the subject. It also resulted in a Political Power and Social Theory article on the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), the American Labor Party, and Third Party Politics in the United States.

It also resulted in an article on the Milwaukee County Labor Council, which is one of the 50 most-cited articles in the Labor Studies Journal. My most recent work explores innovative organizing strategies being employed by the Service Employees International Unions (SEIU).

I primarily specialize in research related to gender, work, and family. The bulk of my research is on work-family conflict and the division of paid and unpaid labor in households. I am particularly interested in health outcomes associated with various aspects of work-family balance. A second area of research examines the effectiveness of high impact practices, such as experiential classroom simulations, in achieving student learning outcomes. While not a primary area of focus, I have also conducted research on how culture and identity shape food patterns and meanings.

My teaching both influences, and is influenced by my research. My research interests include social inequality (race/ethnicity, gender, and class), race and ethnicity, as well as the sociology of knowledge. My publications have appeared in the Journal of Historical Sociology and the Ashgate Research Companion to Black Sociology. The trajectory of my research will continue to focus on social inequalities and education, particularly with regard to racialized and gendered stratification of knowledge. While my current research focuses on how race and gender structure the reproduction of knowledge within U.S. Sociology, this work is centered in a global perspective that investigates how race and gender pattern the construction of knowledge in a globalized society. Further, my future research will explore the reproduction of racialized knowledge in public high schools and the application of critical pedagogy therein.

I earned my doctoral degree in Sociology at Western Michigan University where I studied Michigan’s medical cannabis community during the state’s shift to a legal adult-use market. Being among the first to document the experiences of cannabis patients in a post-prohibition state, my research has helped re-center patients' voices in academic conversations of cannabis as medicine. I continue to research the social dynamics of cannabis with attention to medicalization, inequalities, stigmas, and evolving cultural norms.