|
Maryland's internationally prominent sociology department offers a broad program of
excellence with special strengths in
Demography ,
Development,
Gender Work and Family,
Globalizing Theory,
Military Sociology,
Social Psychology, and
Stratification.
We have also begun to build a program in
environmental sociology.
The department has added
seven new faculty
since 2010, and
our reputation has continued to rise in recent years.
Research centers such as the
Maryland Population Research Center,
the
Center for Research on Military Organization,
the
Center for Innovation, and the
Program for Society and the Environment,
offer students and faculty abundant opportunities to collaborate.
The Department also houses the
India Human Development Survey.
With our combination of size, intellectual range, strong specialty areas, racial/ ethnic diversity, and
Washington area location,
we believe Maryland provides an ideal setting to pursue the
B.A.
or the Ph.D.
degrees in Sociology.
|
See
Faculty Publications
|
|
What's Next?
May 21
5:30
Commencement
Dekelbaum Concert Hall
Please join us for a reception in the 3rd floor atrium of the Art/ Sociology Building from 3:00-4:30.
|
Harriet Presser, 1936-2012
|
|
Harriet introducing her brother, Ed Rubinoff, at the Maryland reception after the Jessie Bernard award at the 2010 ASA meetings.
|
Harriet Presser
died on May 1st, 2012.
A
memorial service
will be held on Sunday, June 10, at 3:00 at the
Driskell Center of the University of Maryland.
Since coming to Maryland in 1976, Harriet has played a central role in the rise of Maryland Sociology.
She was named a Distinguished University Professor in 1999.
She had founded the Center for Population, Gender and Social Inequality which eventually became the
Maryland Population Research Center.
In 2010, she was awarded the Dean’s Medal for meritorious service to
the college (see their memorial tribute).
In the 1970s, she recognized that the age at which women have their first birth has as much or more of an impact on their career trajectory as how many children they have.
In the 1980s, she demonstrated how the cost or unavailability of child care was making it nearly impossible for many women to hold jobs, an issue neglected at the time by policy makers and social scientists.
In the 1990s, she began path breaking work on time use, calling for a new view of the temporal nature of family life.
She showed how common it was for working class couples to work different shifts, with fathers doing child care during mothers’ work shifts.
Her work on time use culminated in publication of Working in a 24/7 Economy: Challenges for American Families in 2003.
|
Harriet with the late Manny Rosenberg,
another giant of the early era of Maryland Sociology.
|
She was elected President of the Population Association of America for 1989.
The Association named an award in her honor in 2008, to be given to recognize career contributions to the study of gender in demography.
Harriet's
PAA Honoree citation
notes, "Nowhere is her impact on the field more lasting than on the students and colleagues she has mentored, many of whom have become not only scholars but institution builders in their own right. Her students and colleagues know her as a tough critic whose approval is a seal of quality they continually seek, a cheerleader who is always there to support them through critical hurdles and a role model with rare ability to combine work with family and devotion to high quality research with feminist activism."
Harriet won the
2009 Distinguished Career Award from the Family Section
of the American Sociological Association.
In 2010 she was awarded the ASA’s
Jessie Bernard Award
for work that “enlarged the horizons of sociology to encompass fully the role of women in society”.
The
citation in the award
noted that "her work helped transform the field of demography by bringing a gender perspective to bear on the study of fertility and family processes."
She will be greatly missed by Maryland, by her sociology and demography colleagues, and by feminists around the world whose cause she championed so well.
|
