Research Program Areas
Intersections, Identities and Inequalities
Director: Bonnie Thornton Dill, PhD
Scope
This program area focuses on the development of theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical approaches to the study of intersections of race, gender, class, ethnicity and other dimensions of inequality. It is an interdisciplinary research program area that seeks to elaborate how dimensions of inequality intersect, creating new and distinct social formations. This includes promoting research that contextualizes the lives and experiences of individuals and groups, as well as develops applications of knowledge to human problems. This scholarship embraces a wide range of approaches that permit complex and nuanced explorations. Intersectional analysis is also an effort to move beyond binary or oppositional analyses and toward an understanding of the ways the ideological, political, and economic systems of power construct and reconstruct one another. An intersectional approach, grounded in lived experience, provides the intellectual foundation for the pursuit of social justice.
We are proud to have as a Co-Director, Dr. Lynn Weber, the author of the first published conceptual framework defining the field of intersections (Understanding Race, Class, Gender, and Sexuality: A Conceptual Framework, 2001). Dr. Weber, a professor and director of the Women's Studies Program at the University of South Carolina, has for over twenty years studied and built programs focused on these intersections. Her experience in building coalitions across disciplines, not only between Humanities and Social Sciences, but also including the Physical Sciences, will serve this Research Program Area well.
Fundamental Research Questions:
- How are the meanings of race, gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality, and other systems of inequality constructed across ideological, political, and economic systems of power, and what are the consequences of this construction for individuals and social groups?
- How are these social meanings of race, gender, ethnicity, class, sexuality and other systems of inequality simultaneously reproduced and resisted across different social locations, contexts, and historical moments?
- How can our understandings of the intersecting dynamics of these systems guide us in the pursuit of social justice?
Specific Projects:
Intersections, Identities, and Inequalities in Higher Education:
As a consultant for the Ford Foundation, Dr. Bonnie Thornton Dill has gathered information
on the development of intersection studies; studying the ways scholars characterize and
define their work and the goals of the knowledge they are engaged in producing.
She has investigated issues involved in the introduction and definition of this new field of
study - including how it hasdeveloped and the impact of leadership and organizational location on its growth.
Dr. Dill continues to explore how the study of intersections seeks to meet the intellectual challenge of
constructing knowledge that will affect public policy and bring about social change and social justice.
This project spans current divides among disciplines, between practice and theory, and within
the administrative structure of academies.
Motherhood, Fatherhood and Welfare in Rural Mississippi:
Following up on earlier research on single mothers, their children, and non custodial fathers in
rural Mississippi, this project reexamines coping and survival strategies of low-income single
mothers and fathers in two communities. Specifically, it explores the impact of two recent changes:
welfare reform and the introduction of dockside gambling on the social, psychological and economic well-being of
women, men and their children in the context of these changing communities.
Radio Interview on the Intersections of Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality at the Youngstown Center
for Working Class Studies at Youngstown State University:
Dr. Dill, invited as a visiting speaker, joined a radio interview hosted by Focus with Dr. Evelyn Hu-DeHart of
Brown University in May. In this interview, Dr. Dill discusses her study, conducted as a
consultant to the Ford Foundation, of the “state of the field” for intersectional scholarship.
Focus: Working-Class Studies on the Radio runs on the local NPR affiliate, WYSU, 88.5 FM by Center for Working Class Studies at Youngstown State University. Listen to the interview on-line; file is in RealPlayer format.
Campus and Community Affiliates:
- Maryland Population Research Center
- Demography of Inequality Project
Selected Publications
- Dill, Bonnie Thornton. Forthcoming. "Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Motherhood, Work and Welfare in the Rural South."
- Dill, Bonnie Thornton. Forthcoming. "Poverty in the Rural U.S.: Implications for Children, Families and Communities." In Judith Blau, ed., Blackwell Companion to Sociology. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers.
- Dill, Bonnie Thornton, Maxine Baca Zinn, and Sandra L. Patton, 1999. "Race, Family Values and Welfare Reform." In Louis Kushnick and James Jennings, Eds. A New Introduction to Poverty, The Role of Race, Power and Politics, New York: New York University Press, pp. 263-286.
- Dill, Bonnie Thornton, Maxine Baca Zinn, and Sandra L. Patton, 1998."Valuing Families Differently: Race, Poverty and Welfare Reform." London: Sage Race Relations Abstracts, Vol. 23:3 (August), pp. 4-30.
- Dill, Bonnie Thornton, 1998. "A Better Life for Me and My Children: Low-income Single Mothers? Struggle for Self-Sufficiency in the Rural South," Journal of Comparative Family Studies, 29:2 (Summer) pp. 419-428.
- Weber, Lynn, 2001. Understanding Race, Class, Gender and Sexuality: A Conceptual Framework. McGraw-Hill.
Related RIGs:
- Poverty and Welfare Working Group
- Structure and Agency in Education
- Working Group on Intersectionality and Globalization