Accomplishments: Department of Sociology

Barb Brents (Sociology) recently published “Neoliberalism’s Market Morality and Heteroflexibility: Protectionist and Free Market Discourses in Debates for Legal Prostitution” in the journal Sexuality Research and Social Policy. She demonstrates how prostitution supporters and opponents both draw from neoliberal discourses to construct and deploy…
Jennifer Keene and Takashi Yamashita (Sociology) recently completed the Nevada Volunteerism Research Initiative 2015 Survey Report. Nevada’s volunteer participation rate (20.7%) is one of the lowest and currently ranked 49th in the nation. The initiated team was — led by professor Jennifer Keene and assisted by professor Takashi…
Georgiann Davis (Sociology) has been selected by the American Sociological Association (ASA) Medical Sociology Section as the 2016 recipient of the Donald Light Award for the Applied or Public Practice of Medical Sociology. Her selection is based, in part, on her recent book Contesting Intersex: The Dubious Diagnosis.     This is the…
Georgiann Davis (Sociology) recently published a co-authored, peer-reviewed article in the highly regarded journal Gender & Society. The article, "Giving Sex: Deconstructing Intersex and Trans Medicalization Practices," examines the different ways in which medical providers approach and treat intersex patients as compared to trans patients.…
Michael Ian Borer (Sociology) is the author of the recently published book Sociology in Everyday Life (Waveland Press). Over multiple successful editions, this distinctive text puts day-to-day life under the microscope of sociological analysis, providing an engaging treatment of situations and interactions that are resonant with readers’ daily…
Ranita Ray (Sociology) gave an invited presentation at the UCLA Department of Sociology Irene Flecknoe Ross Lecture Series Ethnography Working Group in February. Titled "Making of a Teenage Service Class," the talk related to her upcoming book with University of California Press.   Abstract: Many of the stereotypes of low-income urban youth…
Takashi Yamashita (Sociology) is the author of the article "Measuring Positive Attitudes Toward Persons with Dementia: A Validation of the Allophilia Scale," which appears in the journal Dementia. The abstract states "Efforts to combat ageism typically focus on negative attitudes toward members of an out-group. Changing attitudes also requires…
Michael Ian Borer (Sociology) recently published an article, "Re-sensing Las Vegas: Aesthetic Entrepreneurship and Local Urban Culture," in the Journal of Urbanism: International Research on Placemaking and Urban Sustainability, which now is available online before it is published in print in the next few months. In this article, Borer …
Robert Futrell, chair of the department of sociology, was recently cited in an article in The New Yorker, "San Bernardino and the Mechanics of a Double Life," drawing on his work with UNLV Sociology alumnus Pete Simi on extremists. 
Simon Gottschalk (Sociology) is organizing a symposium titled "Hyperconnected Individuals, Accelerated Society: Tensions and Transformations" with the International Center for Research on the Hypermodern Individual and Society, ESCP Europe, which will take place in Paris in June.
Simon Gottschalk (Sociology) has published a book chapter titled "Playing Music" in the edited book Popular Culture as Everyday Life (Routledge, 2015). 
Georgiann Davis (Sociology) brought her intersex expertise, both professional and personal, to the CBS daytime audience as a special expert guest on the Dr. Phil television show Nov. 30. In addition to publishing numerous articles on intersex in both scholarly and popular press outlets, she is the author of Contesting Intersex: The Dubious…