Dissertation Title/Topic: "The Persecution and Prosecution of Granny Midwifery in South Carolina from 1900 to 1960"
More specifically, my dissertation focuses on how granny midwives were pushed out of birthing work by physicians and other health professionals as evidenced within articles from the Journal of the American Medical Association and the Journal of the South Carolina Medical Association and medical practice acts promoting the professionalization of medicine and the medicalization of birth. I am examining these articles for the presence or absence of three themes: racism, sexism, and inter-occupational conflict. Sexism is evidenced by comments/opinions made by physicians and other health professionals regarding the weakness and incompetence of women as healers and patients. Furthermore, many of these comments are couched within what Paula Giddings terms "the cult of domesticity." In other words, patriarchal notions that women must be pious remain within the domestic sphere, submissive to the will of men, serve as brood mares, and child caregivers. Racism is reflected within ethnocentric or prejudiced comments made by those in health professions espoused about people of African decent and their supposed inherent lack of medicinal capabilities. Inter-occupational conflict is present within medical personnel's statements maligning midwives and other lay practitioners for what was perceived as their attempts to usurp "birthing work."

Dissertation Advisor:  Karen Campbell

Research Interests: Medical sociology (particularly women's health), crime and deviance

Teaching Interests: Social Problems, Criminology, African American Sociology, Race, Gender and Health, Women's Health

E-Mail:  aliciavandy@hotmail.com

Dissertation Title: Tempest in a Tea Pot: Analysis of Contemporary Witch Hunts in the Tea Plantations of North Bengal. (1980-2006).
In my dissertation, I use a variety of qualitative methods (case study, in depth interviews and ethnography) to analyze how a migrant labor community uses “extreme deviance” as a form of protest. Using contemporary cases of witch hunts among the tribal migrant laborers in the tea plantations of India, I examine the causes behind individual incidents of witch hunts over a twenty six year time period. Specifically, I am interested in how the conflicts within the plantations between the management and the workers have an influence on the workers lives and whether witch hunts are a manifestation of protests against the plantation management. The tribal communities in India have a reputation for the belief and persecution of witches, and in the recent decades, incidents of witch hunts have been a major concern among the plantation community. Using theories of deviance and gender power structure, I examine what defines a deviant (in this case a “witch”) in the tribal labor community and what social conditions lead to a “suitable” labeling of a deviant (in this case branding or labeling an individual as a witch).

Dissertation Advisor: Gary Jensen

Research Interests: Deviance, Gender, Political Sociology, Social Movements and Qualitative Methods

Email: soma.chaudhuri@vanderbilt.edu

Dissertation Title/Topic: “’Late’ Capital: Negotiating the New American Way of Death”
In my dissertation, I attempt to account for the ways in which broad social patterns become articulated in the day-to-day lives of individuals within the American way of death. I explore how meanings are constructed within the funeral industry on an intimate and personal level in light of macro-scale political and economic shifts. Relying on multi-sited ethnographic methods, including participant-observation, open-ended interviewing, and extensive document analysis, I examine the recent, radical transformation of the funeral industry in response to late capitalism. The goods made available to consumers are increasingly made to resemble the leisure and entertainment commodities of other culture industries. The funeral industry has adopted a culture of amusement that is used to conceal its expansion into new markets, create new products and services, and thereby generate new consumers. I trace how capital has been redirected to convert the traditionally staid funeral trade into a consumer-driven and financially innovative industry. These changes in the industry also engender novel interactions between customers and funeral laborers. The consumer, or celebrant, gets remade into an economic actor, co-producer, and moral entrepreneur, and the funeral worker who once held the esteemed role of a hallowed ritualist becomes a gatekeeper to novelty merchandise, an events specialist and planner, a salesperson, a factory-line embalmer, and a branding expert. Consequently, the American way of death as mediated through its current, corporatized form, is refigured.

Dissertation Advisor: Jennifer C. Lena

Research Interests: Culture, Contemporary Social Theory, Political Economy, Work and Occupations, Aging and the Life Course

E-mail: george.sanders@vanderbilt.edu

Dissertation Title/Topic: "Southern Identity: The Meaning, Practice, and Importance of a Regional Identity"
In my dissertation, I use in-depth interviews with 69 blacks and whites living in the lowland and mountain South to examine how they understand, make sense of, and act on their regional identities as southerners. These interviews were conducted with individuals in three different southern cities: Baton Rouge, LA, Nashville, TN, and Marian, NC. I analyzed the data to examine southern identity as a stigmatized identity, an ethnic identity, and a racialized identity (being southern is often equated with whiteness). I found that southern identity was more important to my white southern respondents than my black southern respondents. African American respondents placed much more emphasis on their racial identity than their regional identity. In contrast, white southerners, who seemed uncomfortable talking about their racial identity as white, appeared to embrace their regional distinctiveness as an ethnic identity.

Dissertation Advisor: Gary Jensen and Larry Griffin

Research Interests: South, Race/Ethnicity, Social Psychology, and Qualitative Methods

Email: ashley.b.thompson@vanderbilt.edu