Current Sociology MA Students
Carol Petty
Carol Petty
Sociology: Globalization, Global Subjectivities, Civic Engagement, Citizenship Studies, Social Inequalities, Integration Policy, Sociology of Culture, Interpretive Sociology, Sociological Theory
Carol Petty is a faculty member in the Sociology and Anthropology Department. Dr. Petty's research analyzes transformations in citizenship and subjectivity, focusing on state and civic projects for social integration. Her work addresses two primary questions: how do participants in educational settings constitute, bridge, and shift the symbolic boundaries of citizenship? And, how does civic education render opportunities for political participation among new migrants? She approaches these questions through the context of "integration through education" programs, particularly those serving young refugee students in Germany. Dr. Petty developed the concept of "civic conversion" to express the rites of institution occurring within these programs. Civic conversion provides a novel framework for understanding the tensions operating in contemporary cultural integration efforts (forthcoming in the Journal of Cultural Analysis and Social Change).
Dr. Petty has extensive experience in university teaching and social science research (quantitative and qualitative methods). Most recently, she provided consultation to the LWL-Museum in Dortmund, Germany on a 2023 EU-Grant Application titled, "Industrial Culture Creators for Future.” In 2020, she co-authored a Public Sociology Task Force report, which outlined techniques for institutionalizing public sociology. She worked for the American Sociological Association on the NSF-sponsored project, Understanding the Structure of Sociological Knowledge, a multi-year project to build a searchable database of digitized manuscripts submitted to the ASA’s academic journals. Her contribution to this project included designing and distributing large-scale surveys, producing statistical reports, and constructing analytical files for a public-use database.
During her graduate career, she managed the telephone survey lab at the Center for Social Science Research, worked as program assistant to the Southern Sociological Society's annual meeting, and contributed to multiple qualitative and quantitative research projects. She has advanced training and experience in a range of methods including statistical analysis, content analysis, interpretive interviewing, and critical ethnography. Prior to earning her PhD in Sociology, she studied as a Fulbright Grantee in Germany (2010-2011) and worked as a writing tutor (2009-2010) for George Mason’s Writing Center.
Current Research
Dr. Petty is researching the social practices, economies, and philosophies of new, and re-newed, medicines. Her current project is titled: "Soothing Tension: Dimensions of the Well-Being Social Complex." With the grand political project having left the building, and the technocratic one serving its final debut, a well-being social complex clamors for center stage. Crisis after bitter crisis, no turn in sight, our social nerves are shot. The "scientist" and the "shaman" offer to soothe us, but happens if we take their cures? This paper confronts the openings and closures of well-being frontiers via an analysis of two consolidating, yet differently legitimized terrains: the science podcast and the shamanic institute. Data include audio and visual content produced in 2022 and 2023. Interviews (N=15) with content producers and service providers further situate the logic of these human ‘recalibration’ fields. This ongoing research has (provisionally) yielded a typology of ambivalent well-being projects: sober adaptation and the hypnotic awakening. The analysis dissects each of these projects' capacity to transcend the ‘therapeutic program’ diagnosed in the writings of Herbert Marcuse and Phillip Rieff.
Selected Publications
Petty, Carol. (forthcoming, Summer 2024). “Rites without Passage: The Civic Conversion of Young Refugees in Contemporary Germany.” Journal of Cultural Analysis and Social Change.
Petty, Carol. 2024. "Sociology is Worth Fighting for." The Baltimore Sun. (https://www.baltimoresun.com/2024/02/02/sociology-fight/).
Grants and Fellowships
Fulbright Grant to Germany, U.S. Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs
Critical Language Scholarship to Turkey, U.S. Department of State
2020 CHSS Dissertation Completion Grant ($10,000)
2019 Dissertation Writing Fellowship, Sociology Program ($8,000)
2018 & 2017 PhD Summer Research Fellowship, Provost's Office ($7,000)
2015 MA Summer Research Fellowship, Provost's Office, ($5,000)
Courses Taught
Globalization & Society, Methods & Logic of Inquiry, Statistics for the Behavioral Sciences, Introductory Sociology, Contemporary Sociological Theory, RS: Sociological Analysis and Practice, Social Inequality
Education
PhD Sociology, George Mason University
Dissertation: Belonging in Refuge: Cultural Logics of Refugee Incorporation in Contemporary Germany
Recent Presentations
Panelist, "Life after Mason" Alumni Panel, Public Sociology Seminar, Fall 2023
Panelist, “Writing Successful Fellowships in Graduate School,” Center for Social Science Research, Spring 2023
“Privatized Difference: The German Integration Regime in Institutional Context.” Annual Meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society, February 2021.
“Brokers of the ‘Refugee Crisis’: Schools and the Integration Regime in Contemporary Germany.” Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, August 2019.
“Gendered Citizenship and the ‘Refugee Crisis:’ Impacts of Gender Ideology on Perceptions of Immigration in Germany,” with Shannon Davis. Annual Meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society, March 2019.
“Teachers’ Narratives on Migrant Incorporation Strategies in Contemporary Germany.” University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany), Institute for Sociology Colloquium Series, May 2018.
