Snakegrrl Sociology

Are you a sociology student or researcher interested in using interviewing and ethnographic methods to gather data about a social problem or phenomenon? This video is a step-by-step overview of the basic details about how to conduct interviews. I am a qualitative research who has published academic papers on a variety of subcultural topics for over twenty years, using this process as my primary me...

In this episode, Dr. Beverly Yuen Thompson overviews the book Leaving Academia: A Practical Guide, written by Christopher Caterine. This book provides a step-by-step guide of factors to consider for an audience comprised of early PhDs as well as PhD candidates, who may need to consider employment in the corporate sector. This book and video talks about the realities of the academic job market whic...

Kevin Guyan is the author of Queer Data: Using Gender, Sex and Sexuality Data for Action. In this video, sociology professor Beverly Yuen Thompson does a close read of the book and talks about the main points and how it can be useful for people thinking about data design for both qualitative and quantitative methods. This video is great for any level of sociology student, practitioner, or interest...

In this interview, Dr. Anita Tijerina Revilla shares her research and personal educational experience with colleague and friend Dr. Beverly Yuen Thompson. Spanning a body of research on the Latinx educational pipeline, Dr. Revilla reflects on subjects such as the educational institution and elitism, inequality, student activism, immigrant and LGBTQ social movements, spirit murder, and loving mento...

Paulo Freire’s book, The Pedagogy of the Oppressed is overviewed by Dr. Beverly Yuen Thompson in this video. His four chapters focusing on the Oppressor-Oppressed social context; the banking model of education; “the word” of language and education; and praxis are the focuses of each of the four chapters in the book. Beverly assigns this book in her sociology courses in order to see what insights t...

n this video, I overview the book “Tourism in Malaysia: An Empirical Study on Socio-Economic and Environmental Impacts,” written by A.H.M. Zehadul Karim, et al., in 2016. This is an academic study about the impacts of tourism in Malaysia and includes a literature review on tourism studies, quantitative and qualitative data based on surveys, focus groups and interviews with residents and tourists....

In this overview of the book Black American Refugee, written by Tiffanie Drayton, I provide a close reading of the chapters of the book (spoiler alert). Tiffanie Drayton was born in Trinidad and Tobago but arrived to NYC as a small child, making her a 1.5 generation immigrant along with her brother. The live in New Jersey, Texas, Florida, and she lives in Hawaii for a stint as well, thus experienc...

In this episode, three teachers at three different levels of the educational institution discuss the sociological context of education in the U.S. and the profession of teaching. These three co-authors recently wrote an academic article on the topic of the teaching profession and this conversation reflects on the topics covered in the academic journal article. Morgan Craig is an art teacher in a P...

Co-hosts Akello Stone and Beverly Yuen Thompson interview Dustin Kiskaddon, author of the book Blood and Lightning: On Becoming a Tattooer. Published in 2024 by Stanford University Press, Dr. Kiskaddon takes us on his journey from tattoo apprentice to tattooer, via a sociological memoir journey through the main social concepts that arose during this professional development process. Using a sociol...

In this sociological conversation, two sociologists-- @AkelloStone and Dr. Beverly Yuen Thompson-- as long-time instructors of Sociology of the Family Course, talk about the global changes in marriage, divorce and procreation trends. Globally, people are getting married later (if at all), having children later, and having fewer children. Divorce is also a frequent choice, with subsequent marriages...

Dr. Alyssa Grocutt recently graduated from Smith School of Business, at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario, Canada, with a PhD. She is currently a Postdoctoral Scholar at Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary. Her PhD was in management, concentrating in organizational behavior. Her dissertation studied employees’ perceptions of tattooed coworkers and leaders. It also looks at how...

Dr. Beverly Yuen Thompson overviews the book entitled, “Lean Semesters: How Higher Education Reproduces Inequality,” by Sekile M. Nzinga. This book centers the experience of Black women who are graduate students, MA graduates, or PhD graduates, who are teaching as part time adjunct teachers in higher education. Yet even with, or indeed, because of, their graduate degrees, they are more indebted th...

This talk is called, “Centering Multiplicity and Intersectionality of Asian American Identities,” and it was presented to the Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) Center at San Diego State University, on April 17, 2024. I am an alum of SDSU, where I earned my MA in women’s studies. This talk reviewed my MA thesis topic that I researched during my time at SDSU, thus, it was an honor to spea...

Sociology professor Beverly Yuen Thompson overviews the book, “Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement,” written by Ashley Shew (2023). In this short book of essays, Dr. Shew brings together her experiences as an academic researcher in the areas of technology, ethics, and embodiment to apply to the topic of disability from a critical perspective. As a disabled person herself, she r...

I overview Margaret Chin’s book Stuck: Why Asian Americans Don’t Reach the Top of the Corporate Ladder, published by NYU Press in 2020. This book applies the concept of the bamboo ceiling to an ethnographic study of elite educated Asian Americans and their experiences climbing the corporate ladder and the various levels at which they find difficulty in being promoted to the next stage. Incorporati...

Dr. Beverly Yuen Thompson provides an overview of the book entitled, “The Meaning of Multiraciality: A Racially Queer Exploration of Multiracial College Students’ Identity Production,” written by Aurora Chang (2022). This book is a qualitative and ethnographic exploration of college students who identify as biracial or multiracial and how they conceive of their identity and the social context in w...

In the first part, Dr. Beverly Yuen Thompson talks about the process of applying for a full-time academic teaching job at an institution of higher education. This video contextualizes the process within a tight academic job market into which ~55,000 newly minted PhDs are unleashed into each year. Because of this stiff competition and few jobs, especially in one’s area of research specialization, i...

Sociology Professor Beverly Yuen Thompson overviews the book, Indebted: How Families Make College Work at any Cost, by Caitlin Zaloom in 2019. This is an ethnographic study based on interviews with 160 participants, including college students and their parents, about how they understand, communicate about, and engage with student loan debt to finance college, even while the employment arena is inc...

In this episode, sociology professors Akello Stone and Beverly Yuen Thompson provide an in-depth overview of the anthology called, “The Sociology of Housing,” edited by Brian J. McCabe & Eva Rosen (2023). This overview mentioned many of the chapters which cover a vast array of topics such as: indigenous land loss, segregation, housing insecurity, short term rentals, types of housing, and social pr...

I recently traveled to six countries in SE Asia and as I am a sociology professor, I took this opportunity to read or collect about fifteen books on the sociological and historical aspects of the region. This video overviews all the books briefly and provide a glimpse into the trajectory of the region and our relationship to it. I would love to teach a course on SE Asian sociology in the future so...

I overview the main points of the Yale Committee’s Report “On Trust in Higher Education,” based on one year of research, and published on April 10, 2026. The committee worked for the Yale president and conducted interviews and focus groups with hundreds of campus stakeholders, as well as held public forums on a variety of relevant topics. Based on this data, as well as a lengthy bibliography, the...

We discuss Dr. Bruce Jackson’s book, “The Life and Death of Buffalo’s Great Northern Grain Elevator 1897-2023” published in 2024. Jackson is a professor of English at The University of University at Buffalo and has written numerous books, made documentary films, and is a photographer. This book is an archival project, bringing together original documents regarding the structure and its demolition,...

I am Beverly Yuen Thompson, a sociology professor interested in cities and city development. My partner Morgan Craig is a PhD candidate and visual artist focused on the built environment in a post-industrial society. In this video, we provide a close reading of the book, “The Heart of Toronto: Corporate Power, Civil Activism, and Remaking of Downtown Yonge Street,” by Daniel Ross. This book discus...

How Democracies Die (2018), written by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, is overviewed by sociology professor Beverly Yuen Thompson. This overview walks viewers through the book, chapter by chapter, and connecting the topics to current events. These historians provide us historical context of understanding the definitions and measures of authoritarianism, from global historical examples, and wha...

Edward Bernays wrote Propaganda in 1928, establishing his career as one of the first to develop the field of public relations and marketing by working with politicians and companies to sell their products or ideas. This close reading overviews each chapter of the book, which is fully available online: https://dn720002.ca.archive.org/0/items/propaganda-edward-l.-bernays/Propaganda%20-%20Edward%20L....