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Home > People > Graduate Students : Timothy A Ortyl

Timothy A Ortyl

612/624-9522
Sociology 1067 SocSci 267 19th Ave S
Curriculum Vitae

Department Affiliations

Narrative

My Dissertation: Social Marginalization and Patterns of Family Formation: Using same-sex relationships, long-term heterosexual cohabiters, and polyamorous people as case studies, this study examines the extent to which “unconventional“ relationships represent challenges to heteronormativity in contemporary American society.


Specialties

  • Families
  • Sexualities
  • Gender
  • Social Movements
  • Adolescent & Young Adult Development
  • Race & Ethnicity
  • Social Stratification

Educational Background

  • M.A.: Sociology, University of Minnesota, 2008.
  • B.A.: Sociology & Political Science, The Ohio State University, 2004.

Publications

Research Activities

  • University of Minnesota Close Relationships Study (With Professor Kathy Hull): This project draws upon interviews, focus groups, oral histories and archival material to examine the close relationships in the lives of sexual minorities. LGBT people are often invoked as threats to family in 'family values' discourses, even as the gay rights movement focuses more than ever on a range of family issues including marriage and parenting rights. But we have little recent evidence about how ordinary LGBT people think about 'family,' and whether they agree with the LGBT movement's increasing family focus. This study will improve on past research on these issues by including a wide range of people within lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender communities, including people who are single, partnered, parents and non-parents, people from a range of racial/ethnic and class backgrounds, and people living outside of big cities as well as urban residents. The goals of this project are to advance theorizing about so-called nontraditional families and to assess how well the current efforts of the national LGBT movement match the needs and priorities of its constituencies., 2005 - present
  • Answering the Race Question (with Carolyn Liebler): This project utilizes restricted use Census data to examine changes between the 1990 and 2000 Census regarding people who identify as Native American and Native Hawaiian. This project seeks to identify characteristics of people who change racial identification on the Census at two different points in time., 2010 - present
  • Union Formation Attitudes at the Intersection of Gender and Sexuality. With Kathy Hull and Ann Meier: This paper uses the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health to compare union formation attitudes among young adults by sexual identity and gender.
  • Constructing Queer Families: An Ethnographic Analysis of an LGBTQ Families Conference: This paper is an ethnography of an annual conference that examines how family discourses are deployed in LGBTQ communities

Professional Activities

  • Member of the Contexts Graduate Student Editorial Board: 2008 - 2010
  • ASA LGBTQ Caucus Liaison/Organizer: 2008 - present

Awards

  • National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant, 2011 - 2012
  • Graduate School Thesis Research Grant, 2009 - 2010
  • Martin P. Levine Memorial Dissertation Fellowship, ASA Sexualities Section, 2011
  • Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, U of M Graduate School, 2011 - 2012

Courses Taught

  • Sociology 3221 - Sociology of Gender (Spring 2008)
  • Sociology 3501 - Sociology of Families (Fall 2008)
  • Sociology 4551 - Sociology of Sexualities (Spring 2009; Summer 2011)
  • Sociology 3811 - Basic Social Statistics (Spring 2013)
Alternative Output Formats Alternative Output Formats