Identity and Symbolic Interaction (PDF)

2015-2017. She regularly publishes on theory, methods, law, politics, economy, culture, and inequality in such journals as the American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Sociological Methods and Research, Research in the Sociology of Organizations, Research in Stratification and Social Mobility, Law & Social Inquiry, Social Politics, Politics & Society, Socio-Economic Review and the Annual Review of Law & Social Science. Her most recent book is titled Closing the Rights Gap; From Hitman Rights to Social Transformation (co-edited with LaDawn Haglund), University of California Press. With Sheldon Stryker, she co-authored "Is Mead's Framework Still Sound? Pp 31-57 in New Directions in Identity Theory and Research, edited by J. Stets and R. Serpe, Oxford University Press. In 2018, her article "From Legal Doctrine to Social Transformation? Comparing U.S. Voting Rights, Equal Employment Opportunity and Fair Housing Legislation," (American Journal of Sociology, with Nicholas Pedriana) won Distinguished Article Awards from the American Sociological Sections on Political Sociology and on Human Rights.



Brian Powell is James H. Rudy Professor and Co-Director of the Preparing Future Faculty Program in the Department of Sociology at Indiana University, where he recently concluded a term as chair. Professor Powell's research interests have focused on family sociology, sociology of education, gender, and social psychology. With grants from the National Science Foundation, American Education Research Association, and the Spencer Foundation, Brian has examined how families confer advantages (or disadvantages) to their children and how structural and compositional features of families (e.g., parental age, family size, birth order, one vs. two-parent households, inter-racial composition, adoptive vs. biological parents) influence parental social, intellectual and economic investments in children. He is especially interested in several increasingly visible groups of "atypical" family forms: families with older parents, bi/multiracial families, adoptive families and gay/lesbian families. He is the co-author of Counted Out: Same- Sex Relations and Americans' Definitions of Family with (Catherine Bolzendahl, Claudia Geist, and Lala Carr Steelman), American Sociological Association Rosé Series.