Amy E SingerAssociate Professor of Sociology, Department Chair of Sociology

I have spent the past decade studying the production of symbolically and economically valuable cultural goods in the gourmet food industry, and my current project builds on these interests by exploring the symbolic construction and strategic distribution of human milk. This new project also reconnects me with research questions I've had since I undertook my undergraduate Honors research project, which explored lesbian women's pregnancy and childbirth choices, identities, and experiences with varying types of maternal care providers across Massachusetts.  It's never too early to start asking sociological questions, since you just never know where those questions might lead!

B.A., Smith College; M.A. and Ph.D., University of Washington

(2021). Imagining Cultural Wealth: Producer perceptions and potential  value in cultural markets. The American Journal of Cultural Sociology 10: 461–491.

(2019). The Strategic, Shifting Work of Market Devices: Selective Stories and Oriented Knowledge. Cultural Sociology 13/2: 198-216.

(2018). Rescaling Terroir through Virtual Identity Work and Impression Management. Food, Culture & Society 21/5: 698-715.

(2018). Strategies of Distinction: Aesthetic Materiality and Restrained Discourse. Poetics 67: 26-38. 

(2015). Little Girls on the Prairie and the Possibility of Subversive Reading. Girlhood Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal 8/2: 4-20.

(2011). A Novel Approach: The sociology of literature, children’s books, and social inequality. The International Journal of Qualitative Methods 10/4: 307-320.

(2009). When Bad Girls Go Good: Models of the self and reality on Vh1’s Flavor of Love Girls: Charm School. The Journal of Popular Film and Television 37: 34-43. (co-authored with A. M. Holbrook)

100-level Courses:
SOC100: Introduction to Sociology
​CNX191: Con Artists, Frauds, and Plagiarists

300-level Courses:
SOC301: The History of Sociological Theory
SOC355: Cultural Sociology

400-level Courses:
SOC440: The Sociology of Food
SOC471: Intimate Markets—The Culture and Commerce of Birth and Death