Sociological Images: Seeing is Believing is designed to encourage all kinds of people to exercise and develop their sociological imagination by presenting brief sociological discussions of compelling and timely imagery that spans the breadth of sociological inquiry. Please friend us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter.

For information about interviews, lectures, and appearances, please visit our press kit.

About The Editors/Authors

LISA WADE, PhD (full bio), founder, editor, and co-author, holds an M.A. in Human Sexuality from New York University and an M.S. and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.  She is currently an Assistant Professor at Occidental College in Los Angeles where she teaches classes in gender, race, sexuality, and the body. For more, you can visit her website or follow her on Twitter or Facebook.

GWEN SHARP, PhD (full bio), editor and co-author, has an M.S. in Rural Sociology and a Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. She is currently an Assistant Professor at Nevada State College in Henderson. She teaches courses in gender, race/ethnicity, sexuality, stratification, and popular culture. She is widely considered to be a comedic genius.  For more, you can visit her website or follow her on Twitter.

Contributors

WENDY CHRISTENSEN, PhD is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Bowdoin College. She studies the intersections of social inequality and institutions such as the family, politics, and war. You can follow her on twitter.

PHILIP N. COHEN, PhD is a Sociology professor at University of Maryland, College Park.  He writes about family, work, and inequality professionally, and at his fabulous blog, Family Inequality.  He tweets at @familyunequal.

MARTY HART-LANDSBERG, PhD is a professor of Economics and Director of the Political Economy Program at Lewis and Clark College.  He brings expertise in global economic development and, especially, the political economy of East Asia.  You can follow him, also, at the excellent Reports from the Economic Front.

CAROLINE HELDMAN, PhD teaches Politics at Occidental College.  She is an expert on the presidency and gender in politics, featured in the new documentary Miss Representation.  She’s also an intrepid investigative journalist and represents the liberal point of view on Fox programs weekly.  Follow Caroline on twitter.

JAY LIVINGSTON, PhD is the chair of the Sociology Department at Montclair State University.  His expertise is in social psychology, culture, and crime.  He blogs at the fantastic Montclair SocioBlog, where he also does great work teaching science literacy with his posts about statistics.  And he tweets, too!

About the Website

WHY: The sociological imagination is a woefully under-utilized tool. We hope this blog encourages all kinds of people to exercise and develop their sociological imagination and that, between all of us, public discourse will increasingly include a sociological lens with which we can all learn about social processes and mechanisms, critique social inadequacies, and design functional and equitable alternatives.

Also, if you are an instructor, we hope that the material will be useful for your classes.  A good image is often more effective for getting a point across than all the citations, repetition, or jumping up and down and saying “really I swear” will be.  Also, check out our essays for classroom use and our collection of Sociological Images assignments.

OUR AUDIENCE: We assume that you, our audience, are sociologically-inclined folks. So we do not typically include a lengthy beginner-level sociological interpretation of the images.

DIALOGUE: Images are polysemic and people will view and use them in many different ways, so our commentary, when offered, is never meant to control how people use the images (as if we could anyway).  We welcome comments that offer additional or alternative interpretations of images.

TRIGGER WARNINGS: We do our best to place potentially upsetting images and text after a jump.  If we’ve failed to notice that something needs a trigger warning, or have forgotten to do this, please feel free to send us a note letting us know.  We’ll fix it ASAP.

COMMENTS MODERATION: Comments that are hateful or threatening toward other commenters, mean-spirited toward particular social groups, or otherwise useless, will be deleted.

STANDARDS OF EVIDENCE: The point of this blog is not to prove that sociological insights actually describe the social world (i.e., “prove” that they are “true”), but to illustrate those sociological insights that are shown or posited to be true elsewhere in academia.  This is by design.

CONTRIBUTIONS: If you see an image you’d like to see posted, we’d be happy to oblige. Email the image to socimages@thesocietypages.org. If you add commentary, we may even quote you! And, if you send a website or blog of your own, we’ll link to you.

LEGALITY: While all law is a matter of interpretation, we believe Sociological Images to be legal under the Fair Use doctrine. That is, we use the images for a non-commercial educational purpose and that makes it all good.

About Our Interns

VELANIE WILLIAMS has B.S. in Psychology and minor in Sociology from Nevada State College. She aims to become a clinical psychologist specializing in treatment of adults with severe mental disorders.  Sociology has had an inspiring effect on her and she’s intrigued by human social behavior and its effects on society. She enjoys research and continues to work toward her ultimate goal of attending graduate school.

NORMA MORELLA is a senior at Occidental College studying biology and Spanish.  She plans to pursue a Masters in Speech Language Pathology, possibly specializing in bilingualism. Though being involved with Sociological Images is one of her first experiences in sociology, she is highly intrigued by the multitude of academic and social questions that the diverse field provokes, and she looks forward to her continued interest in the subject.

Past Team Members

We are grateful for the contributions of past members of the Sociological Images team:

Elizabeth Allen (blogger)
Ron Anderson (blogger)
Angela Barian (blogger)
Jessica Brown (blogger)
Wendy M. Christensen (blogger and technology whiz)
Myaisha Hayes (intern)
John T. Lang (blogger)
Lauren McGuire (intern)
Julianne Monday (intern)
Richard Mora (blogger)
Jeffrey Sanceri (blogger)
Brett Wheeler (blogger)