Welcome to my personal webpage. Since it is academic hiring season I have dedicated this webpage to my academic self. If you are a potential employer this website includes a lot of the components of a standard academic job application, located in the links to your right. Enjoy!

I am currently a graduate student in the Sociology Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. As an aspiring sociologist with the firm background in both qualitative and quantitative approaches to research, I have a wide variety of interests, but my primary areas of research include culture (cultural theory, pop culture, and media), law, sexuality, gender, and intersectionality. Since I can remember, my work has been guided by my desire to expose and eradicate barriers to equality faced by disadvantaged groups. This started with an interest in gender and sexual orientation issues, but after law school my interests expanded into understanding the similarities and differences in social processes of stratification across multiple aspects of identity.

My dissertation research starts with the observation that 30% or less of the artists on the popular music charts are female, in any given year. Many explanations for this discrepancy center around gender discrimination long before an artist receives a major label contract: parents funnel girls into musical activities that are not suited to popular music careers, girls do not receive the same social status from membership in adolescent bands, girls and women have limited access to leisure time necessary to develop musical skills, and female artists have difficulty getting gigs. Industry-oriented explanations focus on sexism in the male-dominated professional environment or limited and/or derogatory female artistic roles actively supported by industry personnel. In Pop Stars and Gender I offer unique aggregate-level data to speak to each of these different explanations. I argue that industry promoters favor female artists because there are so few women in the pool of hopefuls from which promoters choose, either because they have been discouraged from developing as a pop musician or because of lack of interest. However, I also show that promoters focus their promotional energy on a narrow range of artistic roles for women, the same roles on which feminist critics of popular culture have focused their attention.

The project contains three empirical chapters. The first describes artist types or personas as defined by artist moods and styles available in the data, outlining patterns of representation favored by promoters in terms of gender and sexualization. It also sets up the analysis in the remaining empirical chapters by providing measurement of artist types that may be associated with an increase the odds of receiving promotional support (chapter two) or in odds of being liked by listeners (chapter three). The project is novel because it provides much-needed aggregate data that speaks to the multiple ways in which women are discouraged in a field that is still overwhelmingly male-dominated, and it offers both theoretical and practical insight into the decisions made by industry personnel that are often held responsible for industry-wide sexism, and who have the most influence over the gendered representations offered in mainstream popular music media.

I also teach in the sociology department at University of California, Los Angeles as a teaching fellow. I have taught classes in gender, sexuality, sociological theory, deviance, communication theory, sexual aggression, and the self. What is unique about the way that I teach is that I teach the class as an intellectual and personal journey, by breaking down the material into skill sets required (in my introductory class, this skill is primarily the development of a "sociological imagination") and then building on those skills step by step and by keeping the students involved every step of the way.