Liz Grauerholz

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Central Florida

Sociology plays a key role in empathy development, which is central to addressing complex social problems. However, little is known about what types of courses work best to enhance empathy. In parallel, sociological animal studies (SAS) has evolved as a relatively new subfield focused on assessing human and animal relationships. SAS research sugges...

Previous research has established a pricing disparity of consumer goods and services by gender such that women pay more for the same products and services than men, the so-called pink tax. This study expands this research by examining whether these price disparities persist across a wider range of personal care products including lotions, deodorant...

Integration of major institutional research-based planning and evaluation processes is a mechanism to focus all university constituents on implementing and evaluating strategic initiatives designed to improve institutional quality and effectiveness. While educational program assessment to foster evidence-based improvements is strongly infused in th...

The topic of human–animal studies (HAS) remains largely ignored within the sociology classroom. While a few sociologists have encouraged teaching about animals, none has assessed whether incorporating nonhuman animals into the curriculum is effective. In this study, three instructors at two universities incorporated animal-related materials in thei...

The topic of human–animal studies (HAS) remains largely ignored within the sociology classroom. While a few sociologists have encouraged teaching about animals, none has assessed whether incorporating nonhuman animals into the curriculum is effective. In this study, three instructors at two universities incorporated animal-related materials in thei...

The classroom climate shapes students’ learning and instructors’ teaching experience in profound ways. This study analyzes classroom climate statements in syllabi from various sociology courses to understand the extent that sociology instructors highlight climate issues and how climate is conceptualized in their syllabi. Drawing from data from two...

Using quantitative and qualitative content analysis, we document gender images in video technology advertisements from top technology companies. We find underrepresentation and stereotyping of women in these advertisements, but the most striking patterns appear when race and age are considered. Black women and Latinas are vastly underrepresented co...

This qualitative study explores a widespread contemporary family form, the interspecies family, to understand how people who count their cats and dogs as family members describe this process of becoming and maintaining family. We focus on one aspect of interspecies families—pet parenting. We find that even though individuals say their pets are fami...

The absence of Black male professionals in higher education pose a serious challenge to diversity and social justice in colleges and universities. Not only does this paucity reinforce the dominant racial system within these institutions and contribute to the marginalization and discrimination experienced by these men, the lack of Black men in profe...

In this article, we describe an adaptation of Nichols, Berry, and Kalogrides’s “Hop on the Bus” exercise. In addition to riding the bus, we incorporated a visual component similar to that developed by Whitley by having students conduct a sociological, photographic exercise after they disembarked. Qualitative and quantitative assessment data show th...

We review a marketing reality borne of the digital era, collaborative consumption, in which individuals actively engage in the production of service offerings for the benefit of others. This phenomenon is rapidly gaining momentum with the advent of new technology and firms that seek to develop profitable business models by leveraging their Web plat...

We review several alternative food movements (AFMs) that have emerged in response to changing food production during the twentieth century. The shift from small-scale, family-owned operations to massive, corporatized factories has resulted in concerns about human health, environmental degradation, and animal welfare; and it is around these issues t...

This article presents a curricular-based experiential exercise designed to encourage behavioral shifts in college students' consumption habits. We describe the Not Buying It Project in which students refrain from purchasing nonessential items for a specified period of time then reflect on and analyze their experiences. Data gathered from students i...

The acquisition of consumer goods is a significant feature of the transition to motherhood for middle-class women in contemporary US society. The acquisition and arrangement of consumer goods during the transition to motherhood often occurs in ritualized fashion through two prevalent consumption rituals, nesting and gifting. Using data from qualita...

The ideologies of intensive mothering and risk society place increasing burden on mothers to make critical choices regarding infant feeding that are understood as having irreversible consequences for their children's long-term health and emotional well-being. Although research has examined consequences of these ideologies on mothers' decisions to b...

Physical or sexual attraction plays an important role in shaping a wide range of relationships and in myriad ways. Our primary interest here is in how attraction shapes the qualitative research experience. Close examination of popular sociological ethnographies found that attractiveness is used as a descriptor, and almost always in a distancing fas...

We analyzed undergraduate sociology course syllabi to determine how prevalent writing is, the types of writing used, and whether assignment of writing and specific types of writing vary by type of course goals, gender of instructor, institutional type, or type of course. Almost all courses represented in these syllabi incorporate writing, with trad...

This study presents an experiential exercise designed to heighten students' awareness of overconsumption in the United States and allow them to see how their own consumption habits are linked to larger social factors. Students engaged in the "Not Buying It" project—which involved refraining from purchasing all but essentials for a set number of day...

This article updates and extends research by Baker and Chin, who tracked changes in studies published in Teaching Sociology from 1973 to 1983 (Baker) and 1984 to 1999 (Chin). The current study traces manuscripts published in Teaching Sociology from 2000 to 2009. We examine both who publishes in the journal and what gets published. In particular, we...

Publisher preview at: http://www.infobasepublishing.com/PreviewBook.aspx?ISBN=9781438139906&format=0&hardbook=undefined Despite the democratic and egalitarian ideals held by many in society, the unequal treatment of certain groups is a fact of social life. Stratification and Inequality explores the many ways in which inequality is structured withi...

Economic discrimination has been a major focus of gender research for the past several decades and such studies reveal a persistent gender wage gap. This study examines another aspect of the interaction between gender and the economy that has been largely ignored by social scientists—gender-based disparities in the cost of goods and services in the...

Gender representations reproduce and legitimate gender systems. To examine this aspect of the gendered social order, we analyze the representation of males and females in the titles and central characters of 5,618 children’s books published throughout the twentieth century in the United States. Compared to females, males are represented nearly twic...

At the 2007 annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, we presented a workshop entitled “How to do the Scholarship of Teaching.” The workshop had three main goals: to introduce participants to the literature on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and to various SoTL outlets, to guide participants in the process of doing t...

In order for a culture that generally likes, even loves, animals to eat them, and especially not to make the link between the two, it is necessary to construct the consumption of meat-eating in such a way that the connection is blurred or erased. In this paper, I suggest that one way this is done is by transforming animals, which are loved, into me...

This article offers a feminist perspective on public sociology that suggests that the potential risks of going public with feminist sociological research are more pervasive and serious than proponents of public sociologies have previously acknowledged. At the same time, the promise of public sociologies for furthering feminist goals has been largel...

This paper examines the articulation of goals and means of sociological instruction in course syllabi. Three questions guide this inquiry. First, do sociology instructors articulate common learning goals? Second, what pedagogical means do instructors commonly employ to meet these goals? Third, to what extent have sociology instructors incorporated...

All information that students learn is filtered through their prior understandings of the world and these preconceptions can present major barriers to gaining new knowledge about the social world. In order to teach effectively, we must present students with opportunities to rethink and question their existing ideologies. The purpose of this paper i...

This study advances understanding of how a normative feminine beauty ideal is maintained through cultural products such as fairy tales. Using Brothers Grimm's fairy tales, the authors explore the extent and ways in which “feminine beauty” is highlighted. Next, they compare those tales that have survived (e.g., Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beaut...

Much has been written about enhancing students' critical thinking abilities, but very little empirical research on this important learning outcome exists within the sociological literature. Indeed, there is little consensus among sociologists (and non-sociologists) about what critical thinking is. In this paper we review ways in which sociologists...

This article applies an ecological model to the problem of sexual revictimization to advance the understanding of how personal, interpersonal, and sociocultural factors contribute to child sexual abuse victims' increased risk of being sexually victimized later in life. This ecological model explores how sexual revictimization is multiply determined...

Writing is one of the most important and useful pedagogical tools available to instructors to help students achieve a variety of goals central to sociological instruction, including critical thinking and the development of students' sociological imaginations. This article provides specific guidelines for creating writing-intensive courses and writi...

Virtually all universities and colleges have policies and procedures for dealing with sexual harassment, but most victims do not report their experiences to officials. At the heart of many victims' reasons for not reporting is concern about their safety. There are also safety concerns for persons receiving complaints. This article documents the eff...

Using three sets of children's books, we document changes in racial images and examine the relationship between culture, gatekeeping, and conflict in society. In terms of the representation of Blacks, four findings stand out. First, the portrayal of Black characters over time is nonlinear and can be divided into reasonably distinct phases: declinin...

PIP This study explores the explicit and implicit messages of sexual harassment that viewers receive when viewing prime-time television in the US. A content analysis of 48 hours of prime-time television reveals that sexual harassment on television is both highly visible and invisible. Sexual harassment is rendered visible simply by its prominence i...

Experiential methods--that is, methods that rely on students' own life experiences and often involve a high degree of self-disclosure--are becoming increasingly common in sociology courses that deal with difficult and controversial subjects such as gender, race, and sexuality. Yet these methods may be inappropriate and unethical, especially when st...

This study investigates the incidence and nature of sexual coercion among sorority women. Particular emphasis is placed on sexual coercion that occurs within the context of fraternal life. Overall, almost half of those studied had experienced some form of sexual coercion, 24% experienced attempted rape, and 17% were victims of completed rape. Almos...

Although much research on sexual harassment within the academy has been concerned with how prevalent this problem is, it continues to be very narrow in its scope by focusing almost entirely on the abuse directed toward subordinates. This study explores the sexual harassment of women professors by students to gain insight into how widespread the pro...

This article explores trends in the presence and centrality of males and females in American children's picture books in the twentieth century. Using the Children's Catalog as a population base and a time series analysis, we found that the imbalance in depicting males and females varies through the century in a curvilinear fashion. The earlier and...

This study investigates whether men and women differ in the extent to which they are altruistically other-oriented in their intimate heterosexual relationships, and sources of this orientation. Data from married and nonmarried college students suggest that men are more altruistically other-oriented toward their partners than are women. However, whe...

This paper explores the link between perceived egalitarianism in dating relationships and several social-psychological factors that characterize intimate relationships. Data from a sample of nonmarried college students (N=328) suggest that factors such as trust, commitment, other orientation, and dependency are strongly related to perceived egalita...

This study examines the extent to which men and women feel comfortable exercising two traditional forms of sexual power, proactive and reactive power. Proactive power is defined here as the ability to initiate sexual intercourse and maintain sexual autonomy and has traditionally been possessed and exercised by men. Reactive power, or the ability to...