Title: Professor

Sociology Office: 4112E BSB

Sociology Phone: 312-996-3074

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Special Departmental Positions: Head

Research Interests: gender inequality and families; families in poverty; feminist activism and public sociology

Recent Courses:

• Feminist Thought
• Sociology of Gender
• Sociology of the Family

Web Addresses: www.contemporaryfamilies.org

CV: Download PDF

Bio: Barbara J. Risman (Ph.d. University of Washington, 1983) is Professor and Head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Illinois Chicago. She recently relocated to UIC after spending two decades at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, where she was an Alumni Distinguished Research Professor, as well as the Founding Director of the Gender and Women's Studies Program. Barbara Risman is the author of Gender Vertigo: American Families in Transition (Yale, 1998), edited books, and over two dozen journal articles in venues including American Sociological Review, Gender & Society, and Journal of Marriage and the Family. She has been editor of the journal, Contemporary Sociology, and is currently one of the editors of a book series, The Gender Lens, a feminist transformation project for the discipline of sociology. She is also the Executive Officer of The Council on Contemporary Families, a national organization whose mission is to bring new research findings and clinical expertise to public attention. In 2005, Dr. Risman was honored with the Katherine Jocher Belle Boone Award from the Southern Sociological Society for lifetime contributions to the study of gender. She was also named as the 2003 Feminist Lecturer by the Sociologists for Women in Society.  Professor Risman has a current research project focusing on the development of gender and sexual identities among white and black middle-school children. A second project involves examining the organizational issues which arise when services for the poor are administered at the county level by both government agencies and non-profits. Professor Risman strongly believes that sociologist have a responsibility to both do good research and teach about it, both inside the classroom and to the public at large.