Sarah Jane Brubaker (Ph.D., University of Delaware, 1999)

Bird House, room 213
Tel.: (804) 827-2400
E-mail: sbrubaker@mail1.vcu.edu

Specialty Areas

Gender, Gender-based violence, Adolescent sexuality, Sociological theory, Health and illness

Biographical Sketch

I received my M.S. in sociology here at VCU in 1992 and then went on to pursue a Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Delaware. From there I taught introduction to sociology, sociology of gender, and sociology of the family at the University of Memphis (formerly Memphis State University). I was also involved in various activities in the Center for Research on Women at the University of Memphis, including coordinating an NSF-sponsored summer program entitled, "Women, African Americans, Science and Educational Policy: A Research Experience for Undergraduate (REU) Social Science Students."

In addition to my academic pursuits, I have gained a lot of valuable experience in applied research, having worked as an interviewer on a study of prenatal care among Memphis' Medicaid population, coordinating a statewide evaluation of mental health care services among Tennessee's Medicaid population, and working as a data manager and local site evaluator through VCU's Survey and Evaluation Research Laboratory, in the Center for Public Policy, as a Senior Research Associate. As an evaluator, I worked on a variety of projects, including a statewide Teen Pregnancy Prevention Program and a Richmond city-wide teen risk-avoidance and academic-enrichment program, performing various aspects of program evaluation.

Since joining the Department of Sociology as an assistant professor in the Fall of 2003, I have been teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in sociological theory, sex and gender, and sexual and domestic violence. I am currently the Director of Graduate Studies, Director of our new Certificate in Gender Violence Intervention, and Director of our new Sexual and Domestic Violence Resource Center, all in the Department of Sociology.

I continue to pursue my interests in gender, sexuality, and violence. My work focuses on the identification and improvement upon theories about the connections among these areas in personal, community and social institutional levels of social life, and the development of prevention efforts through social activism and other avenues that will lessen the damaging and harmful effects of our social construction of gender and other social inequalities in all of our lives.