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):

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.

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

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.

Goals:

In her book Gender Play Thorne states that her goal is to bring "children from the margins and into the center of sociological and feminist thought" (p. 4). Through the use of her book she would like to show teachers how to make school activities. She suggests games that are not gendered to help this process along.

Sources:
Thorne Barrie, Gender Play: Girls and Boys in School.1993.

My Final Thoughts:

I am glad that I was given the feminist sociologist Barrie Thorne to interview. I found her very interesting and respectable. She has worked hard to make women’s studies what it is today. Also I like that she wants to make children a bigger part of sociology. Her views on feminism are something I can relate to and she does a great job bringing personal stories political which is the main way women's studies functions.

Links/ Other Sources:

1. http://wfnetwork.bc.edu/The_Network_News/1-2/TNN1-2_Thorne.pdf
2. To watch a live interview with Barrie Thorne click here:
http://sociology.berkeley.edu/index.php?page=facultylive#thorne
3. http://weber.soc.berkeley.edu/media/users/curriculum/2007/syllabi/280F.pdf
4. For a description of her curriculum click here:
http://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/thorne/cv.pdf
5. http://www.berkeley.edu/news/berkeleyan/1996/0131/fem.html
6. Barrie Thorne. Re-Visioning Women and Social Change: Where are the Children?
7. Barrie Thorne. How Can Feminist Sociology Sustain Its Critical Edge?