Amy L Best

Associate Professor

Sociology of everyday life, social inequalities, feminist and qualitative approaches to social research, youth and gender, sociology of food

Amy L. Best is Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at George Mason University. Her research focuses on the study of youth, culture and social inequalities, with a particular interest in how gender, ethnicity, sexuality, race and class differently shape the social experiences of contemporary American youth. She is interested in qualitative and feminist approaches to social research. Best is author of Prom Night Youth, Schools and Popular Culture (2000 Routledge), which was selected for the 2002 American Educational Studies Association Critics’ Choice Award and Fast Cars: Cool Rides: The Accelerating World of Youth and Their Cars (NYU Press 2006), and editor of Representing Youth: Methodological Issues in Critical Youth Studies. (NYU Press, 2007) Recent articles and book chapters are “Young people and consumption” in Handbook on Youthand Young Adulthood: New Perspectives and Agendas. Edited by Andrew Furlong; “Teen Driving as Public Drama: Statistics, Risk, and The Social Construction of Youth as a Public Problem.” Journal of Youth Studies. “Freedom, Constraint and Family Responsibility: Teens and Parents Collaboratively Negotiate around The Car, Class, Gender and Culture” Journal of Family Issues ; "Girls, Schooling and the Discourse of Self Change: Negotiating Meanings of the High School Prom" in All About the Girl: Culture, Power and Identity edited by Anita Harris and “Doing Race in the Context of Feminist Interviewing: Constructing Whiteness through Talk” in Qualitative Inquiry.