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Penny Edgell

Protrait: Penny Edgell

Professor
Ph.D. 1995 University of Chicago
Room 1039 Social Sciences
Phone: 612-624-9828
Email: edgell@umn.edu
Website: blog.lib.umn.edu/edgell/home/

Curriculum Vitae

Interest Areas

Culture; Religion; Gender & Family; Symbolic Boundaries & Inequality

Current Research

Prof. Edgell is working with a colleague, Prof. Hull, on a research project funded by the National Science Foundation, analyzing how religious, scientific, and legal frameworks intersect to shape citizens’ understandings of controversial social issues (e.g. like genetic engineering, Intelligent Design, or GLBT adoption).  Her work on the National Survey of Religion and Family Life focuses on the support that religious communities provide for managing work and family life across different racial and socio-economic contexts.  She is also working with colleagues on a second wave of the American Mosaic Project, a study of how Americans make sense of racial, religious, and other forms of diversity in American life.

Selected Publications

“Making Ends Meet: Insufficiency and Work-Family Coordination in the New Economy,” with Samantha Ammons & Eric Dahlin. 2012. Journal of Family Issues 33(8): 999-1026.

“A Cultural Sociology of Religion – New Directions.”  2012. Annual Review of Sociology (38): 247-265.

“Shared Visions? Diversity and Cultural Membership in American Life,” with Eric Tranby. 2010. Social Problems 57(2):175-204.

"Religious Influences on Understandings of Racial Inequality in the United States," with Eric Tranby. 2007. Social Problems, 54(2):263-288.

"Beyond the Nuclear Family? Familism and Gender Ideology in Diverse Religious Book Cover: Religion and Family in a Changing SocietyCommunities," with Danielle Docka. 2007. Sociological Forum, 22(1):25-50.

"Atheists as 'Other': Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society," with Joseph Gerteis and Douglas Hartmann. 2006. American Sociological Review, 72(2): 211-234.

Religion and Family in a Changing Society. 2005. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.