Faculty Books
Wendy Espeland
Professor
1808 Chicago Avenue
Room 207
Phone: (847) 467-1252
wne741@northwestern.edu
Office Hours: (Winter 2012)
Wednesday 1:00-3:00
Areas of Interest
Cultural Sociology
Organizations-formal/complex
Qualitative Methodology
Relevant Link
Biography
Professor Wendy Espeland works in the areas of organizations, culture, and law. Her book, The Struggle for Water: Politics, Rationality and Identity in the American Southwest was awarded the Best Book Prize by the Culture Section of the American Sociological Association, the Rachel Carson Award from the Society for the Social Studies of Science, and the Louis Brownlow Book Award from the National Academy of Public Administration.
Espeland is currently writing a book about the effects of commensuration, the process of translating qualities into quantities. In it she investigates how media rankings have influenced higher education, how efforts to measure homosexuality have shaped gay and lesbian politics, and the commensurative practices necessary in order to transform air pollution into a commodity that is traded on futures markets.
Courses Taught
SOCIOL 101: Freshman Seminar: Chicago Landscapes
SOCIOL 306: Sociological Theory
SOCIOL 406-2: Contemporary Theory in Sociological Analysis Syllabus
Books
Fear of Falling: How Media Rankings Changed Legal Education in America (with Michael Sauder). Forthcoming, Russell Sage Foundation.
The Struggle for Water: Politics, Rationality, and Identity in the American Southwest
University Chicago Press, 1998
Publications
How Rankings Affect Diversity, Southern California Review of Law and Social Justice, 2009
Rating the Rankings (with Michael Sauder), Contexts, 2009
A Sociology of Quantification (with Mitchell Stevens), European Journal of Sociology, 2009
The Discipline of Rankings: Tight Coupling and Organizational Change (with Michael Sauder), American Sociological Review, 2009
Rankings and Reactivity: How Public Measures Recreate Social Worlds
(with Michael Sauder); American Journal of Sociology, 2007
Accountability, Quantification and Law (with Berit Vannebo), Annual Review of Law and Social Science, 2007
Sociology Robert F. Winch Awards for 2011
Outstanding Graduate Student Lecturer: Marina Zaloznaya
Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Assistants: Fiona Chin and Christopher Carroll
Outstanding Graduate Student Second-Year Paper: Jaimie Morse
Outstanding Graduate Student Paper Published or Presented:
Upcoming Events
Colloquium: Nicola Beisel, PhD - Sociology
February 23, 2012 • 12:30 PM - 2:00 PM
Culture and Society Workshop: Simone Ispa-Landa, Human Development and Social Policy
February 23, 2012 • 3:30 PM - 5:30 PM
