Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Although nature has often been part of sociological discussions of the city, it is frequently reduced to a simplified variable rather than considered an active agent in a dialogue deeply implicating nature and human beings. In discussions of space and place, it commonly appears as a backdrop for human actions, is reduced to a spatially mapped physical variable, or is viewed as a social construction. In this paper I explore contributions we can make to a public sociology that can more fully explain nature-city interactions by bringing together insights from environmental and urban/community sociology. I draw on interactive models such as Michael Bell’s dialogical concept of humans in the ecosystem as the “largest community of all.” I also draw on Harvey Molotch’s advice to sociologists to pay more attention to actual materials and how they interact with social experience. I explore some examples of new nature-city boundary experiences that expand the agenda of urban sociology, such as human/animal interactions, ecological restoration projects, “postnatural” environments of toxic pollution, and simulated natural environments. In considering shifting nature-city boundaries and linking them to a dialogic theory, I hope to enrich understandings of place and space and to incorporate a multidimensional understanding of nature that supports good designs for living, inside and outside of cities.

Publication Type: Invited Paper
Abstract: Frustrated by my students' persistence in viewing gender in dichotomous and essentialist terms, and wanting them instead to see gender as the negotiation of norms that govern idealized human anatomy (Butler, Undoing Gender), I decided to change how I teach Gender & Communication to forefront the body. Instead of beginning with "what is gender?" and "how do we become gendered?", we began discussing what constitutes the ideal body—for both females and males. My hope is that the focus on the "idealized body" (and how that ideal has changed over time and in particular contexts, etc.) will allow a more nuanced discussion of theories of gender, performances of gender, and the political implications of gendered performances.