Dr. Kerry Woodward

Main Courses:

  • Classical Sociological Theory (SOC 356)
  • Poverty and Public Policy (SOC 460)
  • Sociology Honors Program (SOC 488H and SOC 489H)

Research Interests: Race, class, and gender; poverty and economic inequality; the child welfare system; public policy and the state; theory.

Education:

  • B.A., Women’s Studies, Smith College, 1995
  • M.A., Sociology, New School for Social Research, 1998
  • Ph.D., Sociology, University of California, Berkeley, 2009

Selected publications:

Woodward, Kerry. 2021. “Race, Gender, and Poverty Governance: The Case of the U.S. Child Welfare System.” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State, and Society 28 (2): 428-450.

Randles, Jennifer and Kerry Woodward. 2018. “Learning to Labor, Love, and Live: Shaping the Good Neoliberal Citizen in State Work and Marriage Programs.” Sociological Perspectives 61 (1): 39-56.

Woodward, Kerry. 2018. “The Evolution of Bourdieu’s Concepts and the Intersections of Poverty, Race, and Culture.” In Oxford Handbook of Pierre Bourdieu, edited by Thomas Medvetz and Jeffrey J. Sallaz. New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Woodward, Kerry. 2016. “Marketing Black Babies versus Recruiting Black Families: The Racialized Strategies Private Adoption Agencies Use to Find Homes for Black Babies.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 2(4): 482-497.

Woodward, Kerry. 2014. “School or Therapy: Two Approaches to Empowering Welfare-Reliant Women.” The Journal of Poverty 18(4): 399-426.

Woodward, Kerry. 2014. “ʻPimping the System’: How Economic, Social, and Cultural Capital Are Deployed in a Welfare Program.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 43 (1) (February): 3-37.

Woodward, Kerry. 2013. . Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.

Selected Awards:

  • Most Valuable Professor to Outstanding Student in the College of Liberal Arts, 2015.
  • Most Valuable Professor to Outstanding Student in the College of Liberal Arts, 2013.