Laura Grindstaff

• Doctor of Philosophy
• University of California, Davis

Competition is fundamental to American life, and sport is the cultural institution most closely linked to organized competition in the U.S. Historically, sport has been a male preserve. At the same time, the structures, practices, and iconography of sports have infiltrated a variety of social fields and institutions less obviously dominated by men—...

Work-life integration is often considered the stuff of myth, especially for women in academia. The inherent conflict between an identity as a mother or parent and that as a working professional effectively limits diversity efforts in STEM. Addressing this conflict is therefore crucial to creating a more inclusive academic environment. Work-life int...

Ideally, higher education systems are meritocracies in which advancement or promotion is based on demonstrated accomplishment and scholarly impact. “Merit” is believed to be associated with innate intellectual ability, dedication to learning and knowledge generation, mastery of a field of study, and recognition by others of comparable training and...

Achieving a diverse and inclusive community requires establishing a culture of genuine equality for all members. Our purpose in writing this book is to share our collective knowledge about how to challenge the forces that enable and sustain discrimination in the workplace as informed by our experience developing and implementing the UC Davis ADVANC...

This chapter will focus on why the Latina experience is critical to understanding current efforts to diversify the academy in the United States. We discuss the demographic realities of Latinx representation in higher education, the various ways in which Latinx scholars are marginalized, and what’s currently known about “best practices” when seeking...

Advice on how to build a more-inclusive academic community is emerging; however, this chapter suggests that such advice warrants “a grain of salt” depending on two circumstances: (1) the organizational culture needing to be “fixed,” and (2) the existence of extra-organizational factors that may shape how transformation can proceed. First, the exist...

This chapter focuses on the experience of conducting collaborative, interview-based research on the career pathways of Latina STEM scholars in the United States. In addition to outlining our key findings, we address the process of conducting the research and explain why the Latina experience is crucial to understanding current discrimination practi...

Achieving diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in an institution requires a strong and lasting commitment from organizational leaders. Given the magnitude of the challenges, that commitment must be organizationally embedded such that changes in leadership do not lead to changes in commitment or to backsliding as new initiatives emerge and potenti...

A working knowledge of the roots of, and barriers to, diversity, equity, and inclusion within organizations is essential to creating a more inclusive community, both in and beyond the academy. Structural inequalities arise and are reproduced at multiple levels simultaneously, each reinforcing the other: socially through interaction, culturally thro...

In this chapter, we characterize the academy as a “complacent system” resistant but not impervious to change, and we discuss how to overcome that resistance in the pursuit of diversity, equity, and inclusion. We outline best practices for disruption drawing upon what we learned during the implementation of the NSF ADVANCE program on our campus. We...

This open access book analyzes barriers to inclusion in academia and details ways to create a more diverse, inclusive environment. It first describes what the barriers to inclusion are and how they function within the broader society, focusing on concept of implicit bias: what it is, how it develops, and the importance of training organizational me...

In 2013, the Oxford English Dictionary selected ‘selfie’ as the word of the year. Since that time, selfies have been much discussed in the media and increasingly in academia. Selfie culture is gendered not only because women take more selfies than men but also because women’s selfie-taking is both criticized (as narcissistic) and defended (as empow...

Selfies are by now a taken‐for‐granted feature of global popular culture, made possible by the rise of digital technology, smartphones, and social media. This entry uses the selfie as a vehicle for exploring the Western concept of postfeminism as developed by feminist media scholars, particularly questions of sexualization and women's “empowerment....

Si, aujourd’hui, les chaînes câblées payantes et autres plates-formes de vidéos à la demande proposent de plus en plus de séries au scénario très élaboré, interprétées par les plus grands noms d’Hollywood, à l’opposé du spectre de l’offre télévisuelle on trouve notamment les talk-shows et les programmes de téléréalité. Si les premiers rapprochent l...

[English below] Réputée en perte de vitesse avec la multiplication des écrans et des nouvelles pratiques de consommation des productions audiovisuelles, la télévision est un média qui, tout en restant dominant, est en pleine mutation. La fabrique de ses programmes, rarement analysée par les sciences sociales, fait l’objet de ce dossier. On se propo...

This chapter provides a historicized account of key developments within the field and advocates for a “culturalized” sociology. It illustrates the broad relevance of a culturalized sociology. Scientific knowledge, rational procedures, and merit‐ and rule‐based institutions are not only, in various ways, embedded in cultural frameworks that privileg...

More than any other form of media, reality television has reignited interest in celebrity discourse because of the genre’s incorporation of ordinary people and the conflation of ordinariness with raw, real emotion. This article argues that reality TV is part of an emerging “emotion economy” that generates unique forms of celebrity by producing and...

This chapter teases out the cultural politics of ordinary celebrity both in terms of specific performances and in terms of the broader landscape in which these performances are embedded. The chapter discusses the ways in which the rise and proliferation of ordinary celebrity via reality television invites us to rethink traditional formulations of c...

Nearly a quarter of a century old, the concept of hegemonic masculinity as developed by R. W. Connell remains both influential and contested among gender scholars. In this essay, we use our research on coed cheerleading in the United States as a springboard to explore the bounds and limits of hegemonic masculinity as both cultural script and analyt...

Cheerleading has long been synonymous with "spirit" because of its traditional sideline role in supporting school sports programs. In recent decades, however, cheerleading has become more athletic and competitive - even a sport in its own right. This paper is an ethnographic exploration of the emotional dimensions of cheerleading in light of these...

The study of popular culture has a long and intimate relationship to the field of cultural sociology, being both a subcategory of the field and a separate arena of inquiry taken up by other disciplines. This article examines the intellectual traditions that have shaped the sociology of popular culture, traces the points of connection and difference...

We argue that the most significant and influential research on television over the past five decades positions the medium as a key site for addressing the complex interrelationship between culture and institutional/organizational power. Granting that such work is theoretically and methodologically diverse, we employ an organizational frame that gro...

Cheerleading occupies a contested space in American culture and a key point of controversy is whether it ought to be considered a sport. Drawing on interviews with college cheerleaders on coed squads, as well as five years of fieldwork in various cheerleading sites, this paper examines the debate over cheerleading and sport in terms of its gender p...

He leaped from his chair, ripped off his microphone, and lunged at his ex-wife. Security guards rushed to intercept him. The audience screamed, then cheered. Were producers concerned? Not at all. They were getting what they wanted: the money shot. From "classy" shows like Oprah to "trashy" shows like Jerry Springer, the key to a talk show's success...

Camera Obscura 16.2 (2001) 133-175 --Opening voice-over to La Femme Nikita (TV series) One of the most popular and critically acclaimed shows ever to appear on basic cable, La Femme Nikita has an interesting textual pedigree. It is based on Luc Besson's 1990 French film of the same name, which was remade as a Hong Kong action movie titled Black Ca...

This article draws on feminist theory and psychoanalysis to analyze the media discourse surrounding the 1993 incident in which Lorena Bobbitt severed her husband's penis after he allegedly raped her. Touted as the ultimate example of “male bashing,” Lorena's literal emasculation of John was described in the media as a specific instance of feminism'...

Thesis (M.A.)--University of California, Santa Barbara, 1992.

“Ready. Okay.” Anyone familiar with American cheerleading is likely familiar with the idea of spirit. Because the cheerleader is a longstanding icon of American femininity, spirit communicates ideas about how young women should behave and express emotion in public life. However, cheerleading has changed, growing more athletic and competitive over t...