Kirsten Dellinger
Chair, Department of Sociology & Anthropology
Associate Professor of Sociology
Department of Sociology and Anthropology
P.O. Box 1848
University, MS  38677-1848

Phone: 662-915-7323
Office: Leavell 203
E-mail:

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Biography:
If you catch me saying “You guys” instead of the much more gender-inclusive “Y’all” it is because I was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, but then grew up in Malvern, PA a suburb of Philadelphia. I came back to the South to earn my BA in psychology at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida and subsequently my Master’s and PhD degrees in Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. It is there that I began to specialize in questions of gender and sexual inequality in organizations. My MA thesis was an in-depth interview study that explored women’s experiences with make-up and my dissertation examined how gender, sexuality, and workplace culture shaped workers’ opportunities in two very different companies in the magazine industry: a men’s pornographic magazine and a feminist magazine. I joined the Sociology and Anthropology Department at the University of Mississippi in 1998 and was granted tenure and promotion in 2004. My teaching and research interests include gender, sexuality, work, and qualitative methods.  I enjoy teaching a variety of graduate and undergraduate courses including the Current Debates in Gender (625), Social Research Methods-team taught (502); Professional Development I (621);  Sociology of Gender (Soc 325), Occupations and Professions (Soc 323), and Introductory Sociology (Soc 101).  I am actively involved in campus and national organizations that promote gender equality including the Sarah Isom Center for Women and Gender Studies, the Chancellor’s Commission on the Status of Women, and Sociologists for Women in Society.  I also currently serve on the editorial boards of the journals Gender & Society and Social Problems and I am on the Council of the Sex and Gender section of the American Sociological Association.

 Research:
My current research projects have two distinct areas of focus: catfish and Katrina. In the photo above, I am helping harvest (or seine) an experimental catfish pond. This is part of an on-going ethnographic and in-depth interview study of the work dynamics in the catfish industry. The second project involves in-depth interviews with social science researchers who conducted research on the Mississippi Gulf Coast following Katrina. I am interested in understanding their subjective experience of doing research in a disaster area.

Publications:
Jackson, Jeffrey T. and Dellinger, Kirsten A. 2007. "Volunteer Voices: Making Sense of Our Trip to the Mississippi Gulf Coast After Katrina," in Narrating the Storm: Sociological Stories of Hurricane Katrina, Danielle A. Hidalgo and Kristen Barber, eds. Newcastle, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.

I have written articles on sexuality and sexual harassment, workplace dress norms, and masculinities. My co-authored piece with Christine L. Williams (Social Problems, 2002) on sexual harassment and workplace culture won the American Sociological Association Sex and Gender Section Distinguished Article Award in 2003.

Dellinger, Kirsten. 2004. “Masculinities in ‘Safe’ and ‘Embattled’ Organizations: Accounting for Pornographic and Feminist Magazines,” Gender & Society 18 (5): 545-565.

Williams, Christine, Patti Giuffre, and Kirsten Dellinger. 2004. “Gender in the U.S.” in Social Inequalities in Comparative Perspective, edited by Fiona Devine and Mary C. Waters. Blackwell Publishers.

Dellinger, Kirsten. 2002. “Wearing Gender and Sexuality ‘on Your Sleeve’: Dress Norms and the Importance of Occupational and Organizational Culture at Work,” Gender Issues 20 (1): 3-25.

Dellinger, Kirsten and Christine L. Williams. 2002. “The Locker Room and the Dorm Room:  Workplace Norms and the Boundaries of Sexual Harassment in Magazine Editing.” Social Problems 49: 242-257.
Williams, Christine, Patti Giuffre, and Kirsten Dellinger 1998. “Sexuality in the Workplace: Organizational Control, Sexual Harassment, and the Pursuit of Pleasure,” The Annual Review of Sociology 25: 73-93.

Dellinger, Kirsten and Christine L. Williams. 1997. “Make-Up at Work: Negotiating Appearance Rules in the Workplace,” Gender & Society 11 (2): 151-177.