Mary Pattillo

Harold Washington Professor
Department of Sociology
1808 Chicago Avenue, Room 202
Phone: (847) 491-3409

African American Studies:
5-111 Crowe Hall
Phone: (847) 491-2036
m-pattillo@northwestern.edu

Office Hours: (Winter 2012)
Tuesday 2:00-5:00 or By Appointment
In 5-111 Crowe Hall

Curriculum Vitae

Areas of Interest

Race/Ethnic/Minority Relations
Urban Sociology
Qualitative Methodology

Relevant Links

African American Studies
Institute for Policy Research
Ethnography Workshop

Biography

Professor of Sociology and African American Studies, Faculty Affiliate Institute for Policy Research; Ph.D. University of Chicago 1997. Pattillo's areas of interest include race and ethnicity (specifically the black middle class), urban sociology, and qualitative methods.

Pattillo uses the city of Chicago as her laboratory and strives to be an expert in Chicago history, politics, and social life. In her book, Black Picket Fences (University of Chicago Press, 1999), Pattillo investigates the economic, spatial, and cultural forces that affect child-rearing and youth socialization in a black middle class neighborhood on Chicago's South Side. Black Picket Fences won the Oliver Cromwell Cox Best Book Award from the American Sociological Association.

Her second book, Black on the Block (University of Chicago Press 2007) focused on gentrification and public housing transformation in North Kenwood - Oakland on Chicago's South Side. The book develops the concept of "middlemen" and "middlewomen," the roles that black professionals play in working alternatively to mediate or exacerbate racial and class inequality. It won the Robert Park Book Award and a proclamation of the City of Chicago.

Current research projects include a study of how parents negotiate school choice and how families make housing choices in Chicago, Pattillo also has a growing interest in race in Latin America, and is a member of the MacArthur Foundation-funded Research Network on How Housing Matters for Families and Children.

Pattillo is a founding board member and active participant in Urban Prep Charter Academy, the first all-boys public charter high school in Chicago.

Courses Taught

Sociology:
SOCIOL 207: Problems of Cities Syllabus
SOCIOL 403: Field Methods
SOCIOL 520: Housing, Community and Public Policy Syllabus

African American Studies:
AFAM 215: Intro to Black Social and Political Life Syllabus
AFAM 460: Race, Politics, Society, and Culture Syllabus

Books

Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City
University of Chicago Press, 2007

Black Picket Fences
University of Chicago Press, 1999

Imprisoning America: The Social Effects of Mass Incarceration
Russell Sage Foudation , 2004

Publications

Urban Sociology in the Post-Civil Rights Era
Sociologists Backstage: Answers to 10 Questions about What They Do
Editors, Nikki Jones and Sarah Fenstermaker; New York: Routledge, 2010

Making Fair (Public)Housing Claims in a Post-Racism Legal Context
Journal of Affordable Housing 2009

Black Middle-class Neighborhoods. Annual Review of Sociology 31:305-29. 2003.

Extending the boundaries and definition of the ghetto. Ethnic and Racial Studies 26:1046-57. 2003

Negotiating Blackness, For Richer or for Poorer. Ethnography 4:61-93. 2003

Sweet Mothers and Gangbangers: Managing Crime in a Black Middle-Class Neighborhood. Social Forces, 1998