Sociological Perspectives

Social science researchers and higher-education personnel have begun to recognize the unique and unequal experiences of first-generation, low-income, and working-class students, but what of those from such backgrounds that manage to reach the professoriate? What can we learn from their mobility experiences? What obstacles do they and others perceive standing in their way? Using original data on faculty and graduate students collected between 2018 and 2022, we analyze how diverse faculty (including graduate students) reflect on the relevance of social class background for upward mobility and success in academia. Results point to a shared understanding of ways in which cultural, social, and economic resources and resource constraints are influential although we also find noteworthy interpretational divergences by social location and identity. We discuss our most central results in these regards as well as their implications for building greater equity in higher education.

Prior research finds positive associations between arts education and academic achievement and attainment. We explore how arts education may foster cultural affirmation and mitigate some of the academic consequences of racialized exclusion in schools, especially among Black and Latinx students. We hypothesize that Black and Latinx students reap greater academic benefits from completing arts coursework than non-Latinx White students. Findings indicate more pronounced positive associations between arts coursework and GPA for Black students compared to White students. Arts coursework is associated with lower dropout rates to a greater extent among Latinx compared to White students. Statistically significant decreases in the predicted probability of dropout are found for Black and Latinx students who complete more arts coursework. Findings uplift the role of arts education in the academic journeys of Black and Latinx students navigating Eurocentric institutions and the need for further research on Black and Latinx students’ experiences with the arts.

A person’s educational attainment and that of their parents, referred to as intergenerational education, is associated with later-life heart health. Yet, whether the association between intergenerational education and adult heart disease varies by cohort or gender is unclear despite the increasing importance of education for health, especially among women. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study, we examine associations between intergenerational education and heart disease prevalence (n = 34,113) and incidence (person-year observations = 274,618) and variation by gender and cohort. The heart health benefits of education increase across levels of parental education, and individuals with high intergenerational education have the lowest prevalence of heart conditions. We find a similar pattern for women, but no differences across gender. There is a heart health benefit of high intergenerational education for the cohort born between 1942 and 1953, but no differences across cohorts. Overall, educational disparities in heart disease are greatest among adults with highly educated parents.

Although the motivations of gay men to become parents mirror those of heterosexual men and many gay men continue to want to be parents in the future, the current cohort of midlife and older gay men are disproportionately childless as compared with their heterosexual counterparts. This article aims to understand how childless midlife and older gay men see their childlessness as they continue to navigate their lives. Narrative analysis was used to explore the stories of 26 midlife and older gay men who reflected on their state of childlessness. The central theme identified in the narratives of these gay men was that the state of childlessness is perceived through the continuum of regret.

We provide a nuanced quantitative description of the historic evolution of lynching frames in two major White newspapers. We analyze all articles mentioning lynching in the New York Times and Atlanta Constitution from 1880 to 1950. We use keyword-assisted topic modeling, an automated document clustering method, to analyze the frames these papers used when discussing lynching. We document the dominance of a Rough Justice frame, which framed lynching as a legitimate community response to crime through the 1880s and early 1890s and its slow decline thereafter. Due Process and Civilization frames, which framed lynching as illegal or uncivilized respectively, began to rise in the 1890s. Finally, a Civil Rights frame, which gave more voice to Black organizations (e.g., the NAACP), began to rise in the 1920s in the New York Times. Results suggest that lynching frames were more varied and changed more gradually than typically assumed in the lynching and framing literature.

This manuscript explores if memorials to collective violence can promote healing and reconciliation vis-à-vis changes in intra- and intergroup attitudes. The paper focuses on a case study: the National Memorial for Peace and Justice—the first national large-scale memorial to victims of lynching—in Montgomery, Alabama. Using data collected before and after the memorial’s 2018 opening, we assess the differential individual and community effects of the memorial by racial group, comparing residents and nonresidents on measures of racial ingroup and outgroup closeness and social distance. Overall, there was no consistent relationship between the memorial and intra-/intergroup attitudes. The results reveal that White Montgomery residents had elevated levels of ingroup closeness, in comparison with White nonresidents, and all Montgomery residents had increased feelings of social distance after the memorial’s opening, net of their racial identification. The findings inform future research on the potential ways that memorialization—both passively and directly—can impact reconciliation and intergroup relations.