Candidates on the Academic Market
Ates Altinordu
Dissertation topic: “Religious Politics: Political Catholicism and Political Islam in Comparative Perspective.”
Research interests: Ates is a Ph.D. candidate who works on religion and politics, secularism, immigrant incorporation, and citizenship. His dissertation is a comparative analysis of political Catholicism in late-nineteenth/early-twentieth century Germany (1870-1914) and political Islam in contemporary Turkey (1970-2008). Based on these empirical cases, the study analyzes and explains two major puzzles in the study of religious politics: the rise of successful religious parties and the incorporation of anti-system religious parties into mainstream polities. Ates received the 2009 Reinhard Bendix Award for the Best Graduate Student Paper given by the Comparative and Historical Sociology Section of the American Sociological Association for his article “The Politicization of Religion: Political Catholicism and Political Islam in Comparison.” His publications include “After Secularization?”(with Philip S. Gorski), Annual Review of Sociology, Vol. 34 (2008), 55-85.
Education: B.A. and M.A. Sociology (Yale Univeristy)
Mary Barr
Mary earned her Ph.D. in 2008. Her dissertation “Black and White Together: Constructing Integration while establishing de facto Segregation” uses Evanston, Illinois as a case study to examine how social categories of race, class and gender are constructed and reproduced under the guise of racial integration. Her research and teaching interests include racial formation processes in the US, community studies, educational inequality, qualitative methodologies (historical and ethnographic), and 20th century African American history.
Education: Mary graduated Summa Cum Laude from the University of California, Los Angeles with a B.A. in sociology.
Mary is currently a lecturer in African American Studies at Yale University.
Jennifer L. Bryan
Jennifer L Bryan is a multifaceted professional with impressive experience in social action or applied programmatic research as well as academic social science research. From January of 2006 through March of 2009, Jennifer worked at the Center for Employment Opportunities (CEO), a leading workforce development organization in the United States. As Director of Research and Organizational Development, Bryan developed and implemented comprehensive, multi-method research projects to evaluate the successes and challenges of CEO’s programs designed to help those transitioning from prison to their communities obtain and sustain employment.
Collectively, Jennifer has 15 years of experience in social science research, program evaluation, community building, mentoring, and youth counseling, with a demonstrated commitment to promoting social and economic justice in low-income communities. Before working at CEO, Ms. Bryan held positions with urban justice and policy research institutes including the Vera Institute of Justice, the Center for Urban Research and Policy at Columbia University, and New Jersey Public Interest Research Group (NJPIRG). Jennifer also has a wealth of experience as a strategic planning, research and capacity-building consultant, working with several grassroots, community-based coalitions and community-university partnerships throughout the United States. As a social-action researcher, whose passion stems from personal experiences growing up in a low-income urban neighborhood and from being afforded opportunities to participate in programs like the Ronald E McNair Scholars Program and the Equal Opportunity Fund, Jennifer is dedicated to ensuring that program participants and community members play an integral role in the collaborative process of conducting research and promoting progressive social change.
In addition to her professional experience, Jennifer completed a PhD in Sociology at Yale University. Her dissertation is the culmination of four years of in-depth, participatory observation and extensive interviews, investigating the impact of 9/11 on Arab Muslims, inter-group relationships and community building in Jersey City—a place widely regarded as a “Terror Town”—where Arab Muslims came under intense scrutiny for suspected ties to terrorism. Jennifer’s dissertation research was sponsored by fellowships from the Russell Sage Foundation, the Institution for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University, and the Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University. A chapter of her work was published in Wounded City: The Social Effects of the World Trade Center Attack on New York City. New York: Russell Sage Foundation (2005). She also published several articles in peer-reviewed journals including the Journal of Crime and Justice, the American Journal of Criminal Justice, and Crime, Law and Social Change: An International Journal. Jennifer holds several academic degrees: a PhD in Sociology from Yale University; M.A. and M.Phil in Sociology from Yale University; B.S. in Administration of Justice and B.A. in Psychology, and a Criminology Certificate from Rutgers University.
Ben Herzog
Visiting Assistant Professor of Sociology, Dartmouth College
My primary teaching and research interests are: Sociology of Law, immigration and Citizenship; Qualitative and Comparative Historical Methods; Political Sociology; and American and Canadian History and Politics. Recently, my dissertation The Loss of Citizenship: The Regulation of Loyalty in “Immigration Countries” in Sociology at Yale University was approved, and I began my appointment as a visiting assistant professor at Dartmouth College.
My doctoral dissertation analyzes the changing perception of citizenship in the contemporary global world. I compare the policies of three democratic states that revoke citizenship from their subjects – The United States, Canada and Israel. The puzzle addressed is why such policy exists and why it changes. After analyzing Congressional (Parliamentary) documents in the three countries, I argue that expatriation policy is an attempt to regulate and enforce the national world order. The practice of taking away citizenship was mainly introduced to eliminate dual citizenship which poses a great challenge to the national logic that assumes full loyalty to one’s nation-state.
While there is a clear link between the belief in a national world order and the initiation of expatriation policies, I found that there is not one unique factor that has dictated the abandonment of expatriation practices in different countries. While the revocation of citizenship laws in the United States has shifted in accordance with real (or imaginary) threats, Israel has shaped its policy around the need to incorporate maximum numbers of Jewish immigrants into the newly established state. Conversely, following transnational processes, Canada has adopted a lenient attitude toward dual nationality which in turn removed the main grounds for expatriation. I argue that states do not restrict their expatriation policies as they suddenly accept multiple national allegiances. Accommodating dual citizenship, which has been partially adopted in Israel, formally legislated in Canada and is tolerated in the United States, is not directly related to a specific ideology but is a practical response to transnational migration and particular national stresses.
Selected publications:
Herzog, Ben. Forthcoming in 2010. “The Revocation of Citizenship in Israel.” Israel Studies Forum 25 (1).
Herzog, Ben. Forthcoming in 2009. “The Road to Israeli Citizenship – the Case of the South Lebanese Army (SLA).” Citizenship Studies 13 (6).
Herzog, Ben. 2009. “Between Nationalism and Humanitarianism: The Global Discourse on Refugees.” Nations and Nationalism 15 (2) 185-205.
Education: B.A. Sociology and Political Science - Tel Aviv University (2000); M.A. Sociology, with distinction - Tel Aviv University (2003); M.A. Sociology - Yale University (2004); M.Phil. Sociology - Yale University (2007); Ph.D. Sociology - Yale University (approved by committee 2009).