Barrie Thorne has been a professor for over thirty years. She began teaching in sociology departments and later in more interdisciplinary fields such as women’s studies. She has also taught feminist studies and the studies of men and women in society. Barrie Thorne is currently a professor of women’s studies and sociology at the University of California Berkley. She has been a professor there for the past twelve years and currently teaches there today.
Barrie Thorne was born in 1942 and she was raised in Logan, Utah and her parents were Mormon pioneers. (In 1980, she was excommunicated from the Mormon church for her feminist activities, and this did not bother her.) Her father was the vice president at Utah State University. Her mother had a PhD in economics which she received in 1938.
Barrie’s partner is Peter Lyman, who is the University Librarian at Berkeley. Together they have raised their two children, a boy and a girl. In 1987 when their children were ten and fourteen, they moved from Lansing, Michigan to Southern California. Later, their son went to graduate school at John Hopkins School of Public Health, and their daughter went to Bryn Mawr.
Sources
Sommer, Julia. “A Feminists Feminist” (1996).
Saturday, April 21, 2007
The Way She Became an Academic:
She began her academic career at Stanford and in 1964 she received a BA in anthropology. Thorne studied for a year in England at the London School of Economics. She had graduate training in sociology at Brandeis University, where she received her masters and a doctorate degree.
Barrie Thorne entered the realm of academia with a feminist purpose. Before her career at Berkley she taught at the University of Southern California, and at Michigan State University. During her time at the University of Michigan she helped create a women’s studies program. While she was creating a women’s studies department at Michigan State, her mother assisted in founding a women’s studies department at Utah State University. Thorne and her mother shared syllabi and sources.
In 1973 she co-taught her first introductory women’s studies course at Michigan State University. She taught this course with Joyce Ladenson, one of her colleagues who specialized in literature. Later at the University of Southern California she co-taught with Judith Resnick. The two women merged feminist theories with law school classes resulting in a class on feminist jurisprudence.
Thorne’s interest in studying family and children from a sociological perspective stemmed from her personal experience as a feminist mother. She also wanted to study children because in sociology children, like women, are excluded from the studies. Thorne’s main interest and reason for studying children was a result of her curiosity in how boys and girls experience growing up in a gendered world.
Sources:
Thorne, Barrie. "A Telling Time for Women's Studies." (2000).
Barrie Thorne entered the realm of academia with a feminist purpose. Before her career at Berkley she taught at the University of Southern California, and at Michigan State University. During her time at the University of Michigan she helped create a women’s studies program. While she was creating a women’s studies department at Michigan State, her mother assisted in founding a women’s studies department at Utah State University. Thorne and her mother shared syllabi and sources.
In 1973 she co-taught her first introductory women’s studies course at Michigan State University. She taught this course with Joyce Ladenson, one of her colleagues who specialized in literature. Later at the University of Southern California she co-taught with Judith Resnick. The two women merged feminist theories with law school classes resulting in a class on feminist jurisprudence.
Thorne’s interest in studying family and children from a sociological perspective stemmed from her personal experience as a feminist mother. She also wanted to study children because in sociology children, like women, are excluded from the studies. Thorne’s main interest and reason for studying children was a result of her curiosity in how boys and girls experience growing up in a gendered world.
Sources:
Thorne, Barrie. "A Telling Time for Women's Studies." (2000).
Teaching:
Barrie Thorne loves teaching women’s studies. She likes how feminism provides useful tools for life and how it allows people to think more critically about their world. She enjoys teaching women’s studies to undergraduates because she feels that it serves more of a purpose than her sociology courses. She partly enjoys teaching women’s studies courses because her students seem to be enthusiastic to learn. Thorne was thrilled by being able to teach such an interdisciplinary courses. Women’s studies allowed for her to teach classes which included poetry and philosophy and history.
Through her teaching she tries to change the knowledge of her students by helping them to understand the affects of gender roles. Her teaching and work focuses on the sociology of gender, feminist theory, and the sociology of childhood, age relations, and family. Today she mainly teaches upper division undergraduates in the women’s studies and sociology departments focusing on the division of gender. One of her current classes is called Sociology of Family and the Life Cycle, this class focuses on the different ways of family life and how they are viewed.
Not only does Barrie teach at Berkeley, but she also speaks at workshops which she is invited to in the surrounding areas. These often times involve an audience full of teachers. She also speaks to parent groups about race and class in Berkeley. During these speeches she encourages her audience to communicate with each other about the racial stereotypes and problems within the schools in order to help the students, their children.
Sources:
Thorne, Barrie. "A Telling Time for Women's Studies." (2000):
Through her teaching she tries to change the knowledge of her students by helping them to understand the affects of gender roles. Her teaching and work focuses on the sociology of gender, feminist theory, and the sociology of childhood, age relations, and family. Today she mainly teaches upper division undergraduates in the women’s studies and sociology departments focusing on the division of gender. One of her current classes is called Sociology of Family and the Life Cycle, this class focuses on the different ways of family life and how they are viewed.
Not only does Barrie teach at Berkeley, but she also speaks at workshops which she is invited to in the surrounding areas. These often times involve an audience full of teachers. She also speaks to parent groups about race and class in Berkeley. During these speeches she encourages her audience to communicate with each other about the racial stereotypes and problems within the schools in order to help the students, their children.
Sources:
Thorne, Barrie. "A Telling Time for Women's Studies." (2000):
Community Action or Involvement or Activism:
In the 1960’s, as a graduate student Barrie was politically active by joining the antiwar movement. She simultaneously studied the draft resistance movement which allowed for her to combine activism and research. She more recently combined these efforts by participating with the National Professional Association in women’s conferences.
When she left Brandeis University in 1971 she was in a conscious raising group called Bread and Roses, which was a women’s liberation group in Boston. When she began to teach at Michigan State University she worked with other feminists and fought to establish women’s studies programs. In her article A telling time for women’s studies, that the founding of The National Women’s Studies Association assisted their efforts in making women’s studies a discipline. She is still a part of this association today.
Barrie Thorne is one of the many founders of women’s studies and the women’s liberation movement, overall contributing greatly to the women’s movement. She is a passionate feminist. Her efforts in the women’s liberation movement helped her to create the women’s studies program at Michigan State. Also during her time at Michigan State she participated in local and national feminist activities.
Sources:
Barrie Thorne, “How Can Feminist Sociology Sustain its Critical Edge?” Social Problems(2006).
Thorne, Barrie. "A Telling Time for Women's Studies." (2000):
When she left Brandeis University in 1971 she was in a conscious raising group called Bread and Roses, which was a women’s liberation group in Boston. When she began to teach at Michigan State University she worked with other feminists and fought to establish women’s studies programs. In her article A telling time for women’s studies, that the founding of The National Women’s Studies Association assisted their efforts in making women’s studies a discipline. She is still a part of this association today.
Barrie Thorne is one of the many founders of women’s studies and the women’s liberation movement, overall contributing greatly to the women’s movement. She is a passionate feminist. Her efforts in the women’s liberation movement helped her to create the women’s studies program at Michigan State. Also during her time at Michigan State she participated in local and national feminist activities.
Sources:
Barrie Thorne, “How Can Feminist Sociology Sustain its Critical Edge?” Social Problems(2006).
Thorne, Barrie. "A Telling Time for Women's Studies." (2000):
Research:
More recently Barrie Thorne studies children. Thorne began her study of children by simply observing them. She was interested in boys and girls daily lives and how they act out gender roles at a young age. Dr. Thorne studied children from all backgrounds and classes. She avoided the world of adults in order to find out how children create the world for themselves. She “hung out” at playgrounds, classrooms, lunchrooms, and other places dominated by children, to surround herself with a population of children. Barrie Thorne put together a team of multilingual graduate and undergraduate students to assist her in her research. Hanne Haavind was an inspiration to the way Thorne views the relationships between parents and their children.
In her book Gender Play, she discusses the results of almost a year of research focusing on children. She reports that even on the playground gender roles are being acted upon. Boys are expected by society to be more “active” which resulted in them being more watched by the adults than girls. The girls are expected to be more passive. She suggests that biological determinism should not be applied with these children which would allow them to act more naturally and cross the invisible lines of gender.
In 1985 Barrie Thorne and Judith Stacey wrote The Missing Feminist Revolution in Sociology. They had both gone to graduate school at Brandeis University Sociology Department. Thorne said that her work at Brandeis could not have prepared her for the realities of mainstream sociology.
Until 2002 Barrie Thorne and her colleague Arlie Hochschild are co-directors the Center for Working Families at the University of California Berkeley. At the center they experimented with new ways to pay attention to how children are active participants in all of life. Thorne worked to bring information about families to the medias attention.
She is currently the U.S. editor of childhood, a global journal of child research, and she is on the chair of the American Sociological Association Section on the Sociology of Children and Youth. Barrie Thorne is on the advisory board for the Beatrice Bain research group, which focuses its studies on gender. She is also a member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Pathways Through Middle Childhood.
In her book Gender Play, she discusses the results of almost a year of research focusing on children. She reports that even on the playground gender roles are being acted upon. Boys are expected by society to be more “active” which resulted in them being more watched by the adults than girls. The girls are expected to be more passive. She suggests that biological determinism should not be applied with these children which would allow them to act more naturally and cross the invisible lines of gender.
In 1985 Barrie Thorne and Judith Stacey wrote The Missing Feminist Revolution in Sociology. They had both gone to graduate school at Brandeis University Sociology Department. Thorne said that her work at Brandeis could not have prepared her for the realities of mainstream sociology.
Until 2002 Barrie Thorne and her colleague Arlie Hochschild are co-directors the Center for Working Families at the University of California Berkeley. At the center they experimented with new ways to pay attention to how children are active participants in all of life. Thorne worked to bring information about families to the medias attention.
She is currently the U.S. editor of childhood, a global journal of child research, and she is on the chair of the American Sociological Association Section on the Sociology of Children and Youth. Barrie Thorne is on the advisory board for the Beatrice Bain research group, which focuses its studies on gender. She is also a member of the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Successful Pathways Through Middle Childhood.
She has a number of Publications. Barrie Thorne has written a number of books during her career as a sociologist. Thorne is the author of Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School (Rutgers, 1993) and co-editor of Feminist Sociology: Life Histories of a Movement (Rutgers, 1997), Rethinking the Family: Some Feminist Questions (Northeastern University Press, 1992); Language, Gender and Society (Newbury House, 1983), and Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance (Newbury House, 1975). She has also written a number of articles and her work has been included in different chapters in other sociologist’s books.
In 1993 she received an award for her outstanding ability to mentor not only students but acknowledges the ways in which feminism mentoring is an important way in which to promote change. This award was presented to her from the Sociologists for Women in Society. In 2002 Dr. Thorne received an award which recognized her for her scholarly work, the A.S.A. Jessie Bernard Award for her life-long achievement in opening the field of sociology to include women’s roles in society. She has also received awards for her ability to teach and to be a mentor.
Alongside her teaching she is currently writing a book. It is titled “Growing up in Oakland”. Her new book is based on three years of field work which took place in Oakland. She has interviewed a variety of people, from ethnically diverse areas and a people with very mixed incomes.
Sources:
http://socwomen.org/awardschol/mentoring.html
In 1993 she received an award for her outstanding ability to mentor not only students but acknowledges the ways in which feminism mentoring is an important way in which to promote change. This award was presented to her from the Sociologists for Women in Society. In 2002 Dr. Thorne received an award which recognized her for her scholarly work, the A.S.A. Jessie Bernard Award for her life-long achievement in opening the field of sociology to include women’s roles in society. She has also received awards for her ability to teach and to be a mentor.
Alongside her teaching she is currently writing a book. It is titled “Growing up in Oakland”. Her new book is based on three years of field work which took place in Oakland. She has interviewed a variety of people, from ethnically diverse areas and a people with very mixed incomes.
Sources:
http://socwomen.org/awardschol/mentoring.html
Thoughts on the Future of the Disciplines and Feminism:
Barrie Thorne states in her article A Telling Time for Women’s Studies, that women’s studies is combined with both easy and uneasy relationships. While she is glad that feminist ideas and women’s studies are appealing to her students she can sense a generation gap. Feminist ideals are always changing as goals are accomplished and times are changing. Different feminist generations have different goals but this sometimes makes Thorne feel like an “older suffragist in the 1920’s, wearing a long skirt and corset”, but she believes that as the younger generations continue to change the feminist ideals it is hopeful that we will continue to move forward.
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