Markella Rutherford
Professor of Sociology
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Cultural sociology with research interests in childhood, family, & social inequality.
I am a cultural sociologist specializing in qualitative content analysis, discourse analysis, and interview methods. In my early career, my research focused on childhood, emerging adulthood, and parenting, interrogating the values that are articulated in both momentous rites of passage and mundane daily advice. Whether examining commencement speeches, birthing plans, or parenting advice, I viewed each of these as windows into the changing meanings of individual autonomy in American culture in the twentieth century.
My book, Adult Supervision Required, examines the contradictory ways that American culture has envisioned individual autonomy for parents and children. For American children, growing freedoms at home and over the private realm of emotional expression have been balanced by new anxieties that have severely limited the experience of autonomy in public spaces. For parents, a greater diversity of parenting styles and personal choices has been balanced against the growing power of state agencies to police the family. My current research project extends questions about the relationship between parents, communities, and the state into understanding how parents of transgender children collaboratively redefine the meanings of family as a social institution.
In recent years, my work has focused on analysis of the circulation and reception of global literature. The work is interdisciplinary in nature, bringing sociology into conversation with scholars working in translation studies, comparative literature, and colonial studies. With Peggy Levitt, I documented progress toward global diversification of pedagogical canons of art history and literature for university classrooms. We sought to understand the epistemological, economic, and pedagogical factors that propel and impede the inclusion of globally representative cultural products in widely-used college-level pedagogical materials. I have also collaborated with several of my students to bring questions about global literature together my longstanding research interest in children and families. Across several discourse analysis projects, I examine some of the ideas of global identity, belonging, and citizenship that circulate in children’s literature.
I teach courses on sociological theory, social inequality, childhood, and popular culture. In my courses I encourage students to become active and collaborative learners, think analytically about the intersections of biography and history, and connect theory to empirical inquiry.
Education
- B.A., Mississippi College
- M.A., University of Memphis
- Ph.D., University of Virginia-Main Campus
Current and upcoming courses
Social Inequality: Race, Class and Gender
SOC209
This course examines the distribution of social resources to groups and individuals, as well as theoretical explanations of how unequal patterns of distribution are produced, maintained, and challenged. Special consideration will be given to how race, ethnicity, and gender intersect with social class to produce different life experiences for people in various groups in the United States, with particular emphasis on disparities in education, health care, and criminal justice. Consideration will also be given to policy initiatives designed to reduce social inequalities and alleviate poverty.
(PEAC 219 and SOC 209 are cross-listed courses.)-
Sociological Theory: A Critical History
SOC200
What is sociological theory and what work does theory do in sociology? What makes a theory useful? Which theories shape research agendas and why? The modern discipline of sociology primarily traces its origins to the 19th and early 20th centuries, when social scientists were grappling with the social upheavals of colonialism, industrial capitalism, urbanization, changing forms of governance, and the scientization of society. Placing key authors from this era in their historical context, this course takes a critical perspective to examine the origins of some of the foundational concepts that have shaped the history of sociology as a discipline: solidarity, authority, domination, class, nationalism, exploitation, justice, revolution, and more. As we work to understand the ideas of early sociologists, we will consider how their institutional locations shaped their understandings of the role of sociology as a theoretical and/or applied science, with special attention given to the roles race and gender have played in shaping the history of sociological theory. This will lead us to engage in critical examination of later processes of canonization that designated some works as “classics” and shaped our definitions of sociology and sociological theory.