Dana Berkowitz
Biographic Data
| ID | 75624 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Dana Berkowitz |
| GIVEN NAMES | Dana |
| FAMILY NAME | Berkowitz |
| SIGNATURE | BERKOWITZ D |
| AFFILIATIONS | Louisiana State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8487-6912 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 192 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2006 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Male Femininities
Innovative essays that explore how men perform femininity and what femininity looks like without women What counts as “male femininity”? Is it simply men behaving in effeminate ways or is it the absence of masculinity? Male Femininities presents a nuanced, critical collection of essays that highlight the extent to which male femininities are neither an imitation of femaleness nor an emptying of masculinity. These innovative essays focus on both g…
Exploring the experiences of pregnant women in the U.S. during the first year of the Covid‐19 pandemic
In this paper, we integrate the stress process model with symbolic interactionism to frame our analysis of interviews with 35 women who were pregnant and/or gave birth during the first year of the Covid‐19 pandemic. We detail three stressors, highlight their variation, and discuss how they coped with these stressors. Women reported having to navigate contradictory information about the public health crisis, but Black participants simultaneously e…
It’s Absolutely Intense, and I Love It!” A Qualitative Investigation of “Pegging” as Leisure
In recent years, there has been growing interest among scholars in sexual practices as leisure behavior. The present study focused on "pegging," which is a new term for the sexual practice of biological females (vagina) anally penetrating (i.e. with strap-on devices, sex toys) biological males (penis) among heterosexual couples. Drawing on our connections within alternative sexuality communities, we interviewed 17 individuals (10 peggers and 7 pe…
The Biomedical Subjectification of Women of Advanced Maternal Age
The United States is experiencing a demographic transition toward older motherhood. Biomedicine classifies pregnancies among all women of advanced maternal age (AMA) as high-risk; paradoxically, women having first births at AMA are typically economically and racially privileged, which can reduce the risk of risks. This article examines the implications of the biomedicalization of AMA for first-time mothers, age 35 and older, using qualitative int…
Accounting for First-Time Motherhood at Advanced Maternal Age
Tinder
The popularity of Mobile Dating Applications has increased in recent years, with Tinder transforming the dating landscape for college students. Drawing upon 249 peer-facilitated interviews with college-age men and women, we explore how this population uses Tinder. Informed by social-psychological theory and research on impression management and stereotyping, we show how Tinder’s marketing strategy and game-like platform appeal to college students…
Left, right, Black, and White
Previous studies reveal that Black women are the least likely to be selected or matched on dating/hookup apps, followed closely behind by Black men. Our study seeks to better understand how, when asked to confront their preferences, white heterosexual college-aged students justify their racial tastes on the popular dating app, Tinder. Drawing on data from 137 peer-to-peer interviews with students at two large universities in the southeastern Unit…
Fatherhood Desires and Being Bothered by Future Childlessness among U.S. Gay, Bisexual, and Heterosexual Men—United States, 2002–2015
Recent legal and social changes in marriage equality, parenting among same-sex couples, and fatherhood discourses may prompt more US gay and bisexual men to desire fatherhood. However, scholars know little about fatherhood desires among these men. Therefore, we investigated temporal changes in fatherhood desires and perceptions of being bothered by future childlessness among US gay, bisexual, and heterosexual men. The sample included childless me…
The Ways Women Age
Doing Families
Thinking Through Every Step
In this article we explore how people with incomplete spinal cord injury (iSCI) create meaning out of their changing bodies as they undergo a therapeutic intervention called locomotor training (LT). Therapeutic interventions like LT are used to promote the recovery of walking ability among individuals with iSCI. The chronological nature of this study-interviews at three points throughout the 12-week intervention-enhances understanding of the reco…
“It Was the Cadillac of Adoption Agencies”
Understanding how gay men construct and negotiate family bonds through adoptive fatherhood draws attention to how those marginalized from traditional family pathways navigate an institution embedded with heteronormative, racialized, and biolegal prescriptions. The current study predominantly draws on in-depth interviews with 12 adoptive gay fathers to detail how these men traverse the potential challenges in the transition to adoption. This artic…
Gender and Sexual Politics in Freedom
Bathrooms, Baseball, and Bra Shopping
Drawing on an integrated theoretical lens of vocabularies of motive, gender interactionism, and queer theory, the authors explore how eighteen lesbian mothers and twenty-two gay fathers negotiate the cultural narratives of heteronormativity and gender essentialism as they imagine and participate in constructing their children's gender. Findings highlight the extent to which participants' parenting fantasies and realities occur within a context of…
Maternal Instincts, Biological Clocks, and Soccer Moms
Drawing on an integrated theoretical framework of symbolic interaction and queer theory, I analyze how forty-one mostly white middleclass gay men accomplish their parenting and family identities. Findings reveal how gay active and prospective parents are influenced by the normative family ideal and implicate themselves in dominant discourses about (hetero)sexuality, gender, family, and parenting. Data suggest that in order for gay men to understa…
Walk Like a Man, Talk Like a Woman
The authors describe a pedagogical exercise that conveys the multilayered properties of gender to undergraduate students. They propose a simulation that demonstrates the social constructiveness of gender, maintaining that gender should be conceptualized and portrayed as a process, system of stratification, and social structure. The authors begin by detailing the theoretical premises that guide their conceptualization of gender. Next, they move to…
She Works Hard for the Money
This article reports an ethnographic study of drag queens who perform in Miami Beach. Drag queens are marginalized, both economically and socially. However, drag enables some gay men to emphasize and manipulate aspects of femininity for the means of earning attention and income and garnering situational power. Grounding their empirical findings in symbolic interaction, identity, and performance theories, the authors argue that drag queens employ …
Queering “the Family”
Theorizing Lesbian and Gay Parenting
Research on lesbian and gay parenting has stimulated theoretical advancement in family studies. Subjective understandings of lesbian and gay parents offer scholars a novel lens through which to view identity construction, management, and negotiation. Triggered by a recent queer shift in family research, however, some lesbian and gay parenting scholarship has begun to critique identity theories as constructing hegemony around the identity "gay" or…
"Constructing Gay and Lesbian Parent Families "Beyond the Closet
Activist Parenting and GLBTQ Families
This article utilizes examples from four different feminist, constructionist, sociological research projects to illustrate the centrality of activist parenting to current understandings of GLBTQ-related parenting and GLBTQ family studies. Specifically, we suggest that GLBTQ-related parenting can be better understood if we pay attention to how it is political, relational, and specific. We begin the article by reviewing key work about activist moth…
A Sociohistorical Analysis of Gay Men's Procreative Consciousness
This qualitative study argues that an understanding of gay men's thoughts about fatherhood must be situated within a socially constructed historical context that is rapidly changing how gay men think about the possibility of creating families. Analysis draws on 39 interviews with gay men about their reproductive decision-making. Two samples of gay men were recruited-19 childless gay men ranging in age from 19–53 years, and 20 gay fathers who beca…
The Interaction of Drag Queens and Gay Men in Public and Private Spaces
This study examines the issue of internal segregation within the gay community, focusing on the ways by which the drag queen subculture is distanced from larger mainstream gay society. Through the use of institutional ethnography, symbolic interactionism, and a naturalist approach to sociology, the researchers sought to understand the subjective experience of the drag queen, in particular how drag queens perceive their interactions with mainstrea…
Gay Men
Our qualitative study examines the social psychology of gay men's experiences with their procreative, father, and family identities. In-depth interviews were conducted with 19 childless gay men and 20 gay men in the United States who have fathered using diverse means excluding heterosexual intercourse. By focusing on men aged 19 - 55 residing primarily in Florida and New York, our novel analysis illuminates how emerging structural opportunities a…
Consuming Eroticism
This ethnographic study examines how women and men negotiate their public presentations and gender performances in the context of an adult novelty shop. Building on Goffman's perspective of impression management and West and Zimmerman's concept of "doing gender," this study adds to the growing body of literature on gender performance to show how in the highly sexualized space of the adult novelty store, individuals manage their self-presentations…
Gay Men
Our qualitative study examines the social psychology of gay men's experiences with their procreative, father, and family identities. In-depth interviews were conducted with 19 childless gay men and 20 gay men in the United States who have fathered using diverse means excluding heterosexual intercourse. By focusing on men aged 19 - 55 residing primarily in Florida and New York, our novel analysis illuminates how emerging structural opportunities a…
"Constructing Gay and Lesbian Parent Families "Beyond the Closet
Theorizing Lesbian and Gay Parenting
Research on lesbian and gay parenting has stimulated theoretical advancement in family studies. Subjective understandings of lesbian and gay parents offer scholars a novel lens through which to view identity construction, management, and negotiation. Triggered by a recent queer shift in family research, however, some lesbian and gay parenting scholarship has begun to critique identity theories as constructing hegemony around the identity "gay" or…
The Interaction of Drag Queens and Gay Men in Public and Private Spaces
This study examines the issue of internal segregation within the gay community, focusing on the ways by which the drag queen subculture is distanced from larger mainstream gay society. Through the use of institutional ethnography, symbolic interactionism, and a naturalist approach to sociology, the researchers sought to understand the subjective experience of the drag queen, in particular how drag queens perceive their interactions with mainstrea…
She Works Hard for the Money
This article reports an ethnographic study of drag queens who perform in Miami Beach. Drag queens are marginalized, both economically and socially. However, drag enables some gay men to emphasize and manipulate aspects of femininity for the means of earning attention and income and garnering situational power. Grounding their empirical findings in symbolic interaction, identity, and performance theories, the authors argue that drag queens employ …
Tinder
The popularity of Mobile Dating Applications has increased in recent years, with Tinder transforming the dating landscape for college students. Drawing upon 249 peer-facilitated interviews with college-age men and women, we explore how this population uses Tinder. Informed by social-psychological theory and research on impression management and stereotyping, we show how Tinder’s marketing strategy and game-like platform appeal to college students…
Bathrooms, Baseball, and Bra Shopping
Drawing on an integrated theoretical lens of vocabularies of motive, gender interactionism, and queer theory, the authors explore how eighteen lesbian mothers and twenty-two gay fathers negotiate the cultural narratives of heteronormativity and gender essentialism as they imagine and participate in constructing their children's gender. Findings highlight the extent to which participants' parenting fantasies and realities occur within a context of…
Walk Like a Man, Talk Like a Woman
The authors describe a pedagogical exercise that conveys the multilayered properties of gender to undergraduate students. They propose a simulation that demonstrates the social constructiveness of gender, maintaining that gender should be conceptualized and portrayed as a process, system of stratification, and social structure. The authors begin by detailing the theoretical premises that guide their conceptualization of gender. Next, they move to…
Maternal Instincts, Biological Clocks, and Soccer Moms
Drawing on an integrated theoretical framework of symbolic interaction and queer theory, I analyze how forty-one mostly white middleclass gay men accomplish their parenting and family identities. Findings reveal how gay active and prospective parents are influenced by the normative family ideal and implicate themselves in dominant discourses about (hetero)sexuality, gender, family, and parenting. Data suggest that in order for gay men to understa…
The Ways Women Age
Consuming Eroticism
This ethnographic study examines how women and men negotiate their public presentations and gender performances in the context of an adult novelty shop. Building on Goffman's perspective of impression management and West and Zimmerman's concept of "doing gender," this study adds to the growing body of literature on gender performance to show how in the highly sexualized space of the adult novelty store, individuals manage their self-presentations…
It’s Absolutely Intense, and I Love It!” A Qualitative Investigation of “Pegging” as Leisure
In recent years, there has been growing interest among scholars in sexual practices as leisure behavior. The present study focused on "pegging," which is a new term for the sexual practice of biological females (vagina) anally penetrating (i.e. with strap-on devices, sex toys) biological males (penis) among heterosexual couples. Drawing on our connections within alternative sexuality communities, we interviewed 17 individuals (10 peggers and 7 pe…
Exploring the experiences of pregnant women in the U.S. during the first year of the Covid‐19 pandemic
In this paper, we integrate the stress process model with symbolic interactionism to frame our analysis of interviews with 35 women who were pregnant and/or gave birth during the first year of the Covid‐19 pandemic. We detail three stressors, highlight their variation, and discuss how they coped with these stressors. Women reported having to navigate contradictory information about the public health crisis, but Black participants simultaneously e…
The Biomedical Subjectification of Women of Advanced Maternal Age
The United States is experiencing a demographic transition toward older motherhood. Biomedicine classifies pregnancies among all women of advanced maternal age (AMA) as high-risk; paradoxically, women having first births at AMA are typically economically and racially privileged, which can reduce the risk of risks. This article examines the implications of the biomedicalization of AMA for first-time mothers, age 35 and older, using qualitative int…
Left, right, Black, and White
Previous studies reveal that Black women are the least likely to be selected or matched on dating/hookup apps, followed closely behind by Black men. Our study seeks to better understand how, when asked to confront their preferences, white heterosexual college-aged students justify their racial tastes on the popular dating app, Tinder. Drawing on data from 137 peer-to-peer interviews with students at two large universities in the southeastern Unit…
Accounting for First-Time Motherhood at Advanced Maternal Age
Consuming Eroticism
This ethnographic study examines how women and men negotiate their public presentations and gender performances in the context of an adult novelty shop. Building on Goffman's perspective of impression management and West and Zimmerman's concept of "doing gender," this study adds to the growing body of literature on gender performance to show how in the highly sexualized space of the adult novelty store, individuals manage their self-presentations…
A Sociohistorical Analysis of Gay Men's Procreative Consciousness
This qualitative study argues that an understanding of gay men's thoughts about fatherhood must be situated within a socially constructed historical context that is rapidly changing how gay men think about the possibility of creating families. Analysis draws on 39 interviews with gay men about their reproductive decision-making. Two samples of gay men were recruited-19 childless gay men ranging in age from 19–53 years, and 20 gay fathers who beca…
The Interaction of Drag Queens and Gay Men in Public and Private Spaces
This study examines the issue of internal segregation within the gay community, focusing on the ways by which the drag queen subculture is distanced from larger mainstream gay society. Through the use of institutional ethnography, symbolic interactionism, and a naturalist approach to sociology, the researchers sought to understand the subjective experience of the drag queen, in particular how drag queens perceive their interactions with mainstrea…
Gay Men
Our qualitative study examines the social psychology of gay men's experiences with their procreative, father, and family identities. In-depth interviews were conducted with 19 childless gay men and 20 gay men in the United States who have fathered using diverse means excluding heterosexual intercourse. By focusing on men aged 19 - 55 residing primarily in Florida and New York, our novel analysis illuminates how emerging structural opportunities a…
Activist Parenting and GLBTQ Families
This article utilizes examples from four different feminist, constructionist, sociological research projects to illustrate the centrality of activist parenting to current understandings of GLBTQ-related parenting and GLBTQ family studies. Specifically, we suggest that GLBTQ-related parenting can be better understood if we pay attention to how it is political, relational, and specific. We begin the article by reviewing key work about activist moth…
Queering “the Family”
Theorizing Lesbian and Gay Parenting
Research on lesbian and gay parenting has stimulated theoretical advancement in family studies. Subjective understandings of lesbian and gay parents offer scholars a novel lens through which to view identity construction, management, and negotiation. Triggered by a recent queer shift in family research, however, some lesbian and gay parenting scholarship has begun to critique identity theories as constructing hegemony around the identity "gay" or…
"Constructing Gay and Lesbian Parent Families "Beyond the Closet
Walk Like a Man, Talk Like a Woman
The authors describe a pedagogical exercise that conveys the multilayered properties of gender to undergraduate students. They propose a simulation that demonstrates the social constructiveness of gender, maintaining that gender should be conceptualized and portrayed as a process, system of stratification, and social structure. The authors begin by detailing the theoretical premises that guide their conceptualization of gender. Next, they move to…
She Works Hard for the Money
This article reports an ethnographic study of drag queens who perform in Miami Beach. Drag queens are marginalized, both economically and socially. However, drag enables some gay men to emphasize and manipulate aspects of femininity for the means of earning attention and income and garnering situational power. Grounding their empirical findings in symbolic interaction, identity, and performance theories, the authors argue that drag queens employ …
“It Was the Cadillac of Adoption Agencies”
Understanding how gay men construct and negotiate family bonds through adoptive fatherhood draws attention to how those marginalized from traditional family pathways navigate an institution embedded with heteronormative, racialized, and biolegal prescriptions. The current study predominantly draws on in-depth interviews with 12 adoptive gay fathers to detail how these men traverse the potential challenges in the transition to adoption. This artic…
Gender and Sexual Politics in Freedom
Bathrooms, Baseball, and Bra Shopping
Drawing on an integrated theoretical lens of vocabularies of motive, gender interactionism, and queer theory, the authors explore how eighteen lesbian mothers and twenty-two gay fathers negotiate the cultural narratives of heteronormativity and gender essentialism as they imagine and participate in constructing their children's gender. Findings highlight the extent to which participants' parenting fantasies and realities occur within a context of…
Maternal Instincts, Biological Clocks, and Soccer Moms
Drawing on an integrated theoretical framework of symbolic interaction and queer theory, I analyze how forty-one mostly white middleclass gay men accomplish their parenting and family identities. Findings reveal how gay active and prospective parents are influenced by the normative family ideal and implicate themselves in dominant discourses about (hetero)sexuality, gender, family, and parenting. Data suggest that in order for gay men to understa…
Thinking Through Every Step
In this article we explore how people with incomplete spinal cord injury (iSCI) create meaning out of their changing bodies as they undergo a therapeutic intervention called locomotor training (LT). Therapeutic interventions like LT are used to promote the recovery of walking ability among individuals with iSCI. The chronological nature of this study-interviews at three points throughout the 12-week intervention-enhances understanding of the reco…
Doing Families
The Ways Women Age
Fatherhood Desires and Being Bothered by Future Childlessness among U.S. Gay, Bisexual, and Heterosexual Men—United States, 2002–2015
Recent legal and social changes in marriage equality, parenting among same-sex couples, and fatherhood discourses may prompt more US gay and bisexual men to desire fatherhood. However, scholars know little about fatherhood desires among these men. Therefore, we investigated temporal changes in fatherhood desires and perceptions of being bothered by future childlessness among US gay, bisexual, and heterosexual men. The sample included childless me…
Tinder
The popularity of Mobile Dating Applications has increased in recent years, with Tinder transforming the dating landscape for college students. Drawing upon 249 peer-facilitated interviews with college-age men and women, we explore how this population uses Tinder. Informed by social-psychological theory and research on impression management and stereotyping, we show how Tinder’s marketing strategy and game-like platform appeal to college students…
Left, right, Black, and White
Previous studies reveal that Black women are the least likely to be selected or matched on dating/hookup apps, followed closely behind by Black men. Our study seeks to better understand how, when asked to confront their preferences, white heterosexual college-aged students justify their racial tastes on the popular dating app, Tinder. Drawing on data from 137 peer-to-peer interviews with students at two large universities in the southeastern Unit…
Accounting for First-Time Motherhood at Advanced Maternal Age
Male Femininities
Innovative essays that explore how men perform femininity and what femininity looks like without women What counts as “male femininity”? Is it simply men behaving in effeminate ways or is it the absence of masculinity? Male Femininities presents a nuanced, critical collection of essays that highlight the extent to which male femininities are neither an imitation of femaleness nor an emptying of masculinity. These innovative essays focus on both g…
Exploring the experiences of pregnant women in the U.S. during the first year of the Covid‐19 pandemic
In this paper, we integrate the stress process model with symbolic interactionism to frame our analysis of interviews with 35 women who were pregnant and/or gave birth during the first year of the Covid‐19 pandemic. We detail three stressors, highlight their variation, and discuss how they coped with these stressors. Women reported having to navigate contradictory information about the public health crisis, but Black participants simultaneously e…
It’s Absolutely Intense, and I Love It!” A Qualitative Investigation of “Pegging” as Leisure
In recent years, there has been growing interest among scholars in sexual practices as leisure behavior. The present study focused on "pegging," which is a new term for the sexual practice of biological females (vagina) anally penetrating (i.e. with strap-on devices, sex toys) biological males (penis) among heterosexual couples. Drawing on our connections within alternative sexuality communities, we interviewed 17 individuals (10 peggers and 7 pe…
The Biomedical Subjectification of Women of Advanced Maternal Age
The United States is experiencing a demographic transition toward older motherhood. Biomedicine classifies pregnancies among all women of advanced maternal age (AMA) as high-risk; paradoxically, women having first births at AMA are typically economically and racially privileged, which can reduce the risk of risks. This article examines the implications of the biomedicalization of AMA for first-time mothers, age 35 and older, using qualitative int…
Psychology (21 works) · Sociology (19 works) · Gender Studies (16 works) · Social Psychology (13 works) · LGBTQ Health, Identity, and Policy (12 works) · Political science (11 works) · Reproductive Health and Technologies (10 works) · Gender Studies (9 works) · Developmental psychology (7 works) · Social Psychology (7 works)