Washington and Lee University
My research focuses on social interaction in culture industries. I utilize qualitative methods in that research, focusing on in-depth interviewing, participant observation, and qualitative content analysis of documents. My dissertation is an examination of the work that goes into the creation of art, particularly the work done by support personnel in art worlds - the larger networks of workers involved in the creation of art. Though previous research on art worlds has often focused on the work of artists, I focus my research on stage managers, a key group of support personnel in the theater art world. By studying stage managers, I am able to describe the ways in which support personnel make artworks possible. I also examine how stage managers understand the work that they do and the social psychological implications of this work in their lives. Finally, I examine the artistic consequences of the work that stage managers do, offering new insights into how the social context of the creation of art affects the art itself. The position of stage manager exemplifies one powerful way of managing temporary project groups, coordinating people with disparate expertise to realize a specific goal. This study therefore has applications that extend beyond the art world to project groups in business, the sciences, and academia.
My next project is an exploration of how performing arts organizations decide which pieces to produce. It will have two major components: the first will be a mixed-methods cultural diffusion study that examines how plays are adopted by different theatre companies, and how the productions of plays are adapted for new contexts. It will attempt to identify the qualities that determine whether a theater company will be an opinion leader or a later adopter. The second component of the project is qualitative; it will involve participant observation and in-depth interviewing in an attempt to ascertain what criteria those with decision-making powers in the theatre use to select plays for their companies. These criteria will be analyzed in order to understand the microsocial, mesosocial, and macrosocial forces that help determine which plays get produced. This project has policy implications for arts organizations, but also has an impact on the larger question of which cultural objects (plays, artworks, books, and music) are available to consumers. The study would analyze whether the demographic characteristics of creators (race, gender, class), systems of morality, or other characteristics of the work itself limited their adoption and thus accessibility to a wider public.
I love teaching the upper level courses in the major – Sociological Theory and Social Research Methods. I am enjoying teaching General Sociology and hope to offer Theories of Social Psychology in the winter term. In the future, I would love to teach a course on the Sociology of Culture or the Sociology of Art, and my spring term class will reflect that interest.
I have also engaged in the scholarship of teaching and learning. For example, I co-authored a note on teaching Goffman in Teaching Sociology that describes a technique for demonstrating his theory of tact and embarrassment to students. I also co-authored the Instructor’s Manual for John DeLamater and David Myers’ Social Psychology, in which we offered suggestions for teachers of activities and discussion questions that would get students engaged in a class about social psychological topic.