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Professor of Sociology

Linda Blum is a qualitative sociologist whose interests include: contradictions in contemporary gender relations; disability, health, and the body; and families, work, inequality and intersectionality. She has long studied how gender ideologies in the United States measure women against each other, as respectable or disreputable, fit or unfit, in ways that reinforce class and race inequality and individualize responsibility for larger structural inequality. In addition to articles and chapters, she is the author of Between Feminism and Labor: The Significance of the Comparable Worth Movement (1991, University of California Press); At the Breast: Ideologies of Breastfeeding and Motherhood in the Contemporary United States (1999, Beacon); and Raising Generation Rx: Mothering Kids with Invisible Disabilities in an Age of Inequality (2015, NYU Press).

View CV
  • 2016 Outstanding Publication in the Sociology of Disability Award, Disability and Society Section, American Sociological Association, for Raising Generation Rx.
  • 2013 Honorable Mention, Distinguished Article Award, Sex and Gender Section, American Sociological Association for “‘Not Some Big, Huge, Racial-Type Thing, But . . .’”
  • 2012 Visiting Scholar, Centre for Gender Research, Uppsala University, Sweden, October.
  • 2007-08 Chair (elected), Sex and Gender Section, American Sociological Association.

 Public Sociology

  • 2016 Interview, Diana Tourjee, “’Chop the Things Off’: The Plight of Boys Who Grow Breasts.” Vice Magazine, January 13.
  • 2015 Interview, TalkPoverty Radio, Episode 2, All Eyes on Baltimore. Center for American Progress, May.
  • 2015 Blog post, TalkPoverty.org, “Following Mothers’ Day, Stop Blaming Mothers.” May.
  • 2015 Featured Segment, Think, KERA Radio (NPR Dallas), “Raising Children with Invisible Disabilities.” March 25.
  • 2014 Interview, Mallory Black, “More Places to Breastfeed Brings Back Cultural Traditions.” Osage News (Osage Nation, Pawhuska OK), November; and Native Health News Alliance website, August.
  • 2014 Interview, Kristen V. Brown, “Instagram’s ‘Mommy Wars’: the Right to Bare Chest.” San Francisco Chronicle, July
  • 2012 Interview, Sarah Springer, “Can There Be an All-American Beauty?” CNN.com April.
  • 2012 Cited in Elizabeth Badinter, “The Tyranny of Breast-feeding.” Harper’s Magazine, March.
  • 2012 Interview, Amelia Pak-Harvey, “Universities Across Nation Discuss Plans Against Sexual Assault.” Daily Free Press, Boston University, March.
  • 2012 Interview and Cited in Suzanne Barston, Bottled Up, University of California Press.
  • 2012 Interview, Claire Gordon, Huffington Post, revival of wet-nursing as an occupation, January.
  • 2010 Featured Segment, Kate Raphael, KPFA Radio Women’s Magazine, Women office workers two decades after Between Feminism and Labor, April 12.

BOOKS:

  • 2015 Raising Generation Rx: Mothering Kids with Invisible Disabilities in an Age of Inequality. NY: New York University Press.
    • Reviews: American Journal of Sociology, Booklist, Contemporary Sociology, Disability & Society, Gender & Society, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Kirkus Reviews, Midwest Book Review, Metapsychology Online Reviews, Sociology of Health & Illness
  • At the Breast: Ideologies of Breastfeeding and Motherhood in the Contemporary United States. Boston: Beacon Press, 1999.
  • Between Feminism and Labor: The Significance of the Comparable Worth Movement. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991.

REFEREED ARTICLES: (** = with graduate students)

  • 2018 “Women Organized Against Sexual Harassment: A Grassroots Struggle for Title IX Enforcement, 1978-1980.” Linda Blum and Ethel Mickey.** Feminist Formations 30, 2: 175-201.
  • 2015 “’Suits to Self-Sufficiency’: Dress for Success and Neoliberal Maternalism.” Emily R. Cummins and Linda M. Blum.** Gender & Society 29, 5: 623-646.
  • Blum, Linda M., Amber Jamilla Musser, Martha Albertson Fineman. 2023. Coedited special issue, Complexities of Care and Caring, Signs 49, 1: https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/toc/signs/2023/49/1
  •  Blum, Linda M., Kaitlyn Eri Lee, Olivia Binder, and Emma Clifford. 2023. “Dating at a Distance: Does It Take a Pandemic to Challenge Campus Sexual Culture?” Sociological Forum 38,3:  http://doi.org/10.1111/socf.12922

REFEREED CHAPTERS: (**= with graduate students)

  • 2020 “Narratives of Care and Citizenship: Mothering ‘Precariously Normal’ Adult Sons and Daughters in an Age of Inequality.” Research in Social Science and Disability 11: New Narratives of Disability: Constructions, Clashes, and Controversies, eds. Sara Green and Donileen Loseke. Emerald.
  • 2020 “Gender and Disability Studies.” (9,900 words) Companion to Gender Studies, ed. Nancy Naples, Wiley Blackwell.
  • 2019 “Women Organized Against Sexual Harassment: Protesting Sexual Violence on Campus, Then and Now.” Linda Blum and Ethel Mickey.** Handbook of Contemporary Feminism, eds. T. Oren and A. Press, Routledge.
  • 2016 “Protecting Our Children: Paradoxes of Resistance in an Era of Neoliberal Education.” Linda Blum and Shelley Kimelberg. Sage Handbook of Resistance, eds. David Courpasson and Steven Vallas. London: Sage.
  • 2016 “Mothering with Neuroscience in a Neoliberal Age: Child Disorders and Embodied Brains.” Linda M. Blum with Estye R. Fenton.**Bodies, Boundaries and Vulnerabilities: Interrogating Social, Cultural and Political Aspects of Embodiment, ed. Lisa Folkmarson Kall, Uppsala University, Centre for Gender Research, Crossroads of Knowledge, and NY: Springer.
  • Education

    PhD, Sociology
    University of California, Berkeley, 1987

  • Contact

  • Address

    936 Renaissance Park
    360 Huntington Avenue
    Boston, MA 02115