Dr. Karen Honeycutt

Dr. Karen Honeycutt has been at Keene State since fall 2002 and is currently Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies and Sociology. (Effective fall 2011, her appointment is 2/3 Women's and Gender Studies and 1/3 Sociology.) Prof. Honeycutt got her bachelor's degree from the University of New Hampshire, a master's degree in journalism from UC-Berkeley, and a Ph.D. in sociology and graduate certificate in women's studies from the University of Michigan (1999). She taught at Michigan through spring 2002. Her main teaching focus here is the mass media and popular culture and she has developed courses in this area. One of these is Soc. 260, Popular Culture, which she teaches almost every semester (effective spring '08, this course is IS-SOC 260 because it's part of KSC's new Integrative Studies Program). Another is Soc. 460, Topics in Popular Culture, which she taught in fall 2005, focusing on personal and social identities and their relation to pop culture. At KSC, she has also taught introductory sociology, social problems, sociological theory, research methods, and a course on the body and sexuality. Outside of her home department, she has taught Women's Studies 301, Feminist Theory, three times, and Introduction to Women's Studies once. At Michigan, she taught a large variety of courses including intro. to sociology, social psychology, the sociology of the mass media, the sociology of gender, race and ethnic relations, medical sociology, American immigration, juvenile delinquency, and deviant behavior. Other teaching interests are the sociology of education (especially how it contributes to upward mobility), social stratification (especially focusing on social class inequality), and social psychology.

Professor Honeycutt's primary research interests fall into two broad categories: (1) the sociology of the body and (2) the sociology of social class and its intersections with gender, race, and sexuality, with a focus on individuals from working-class backgrounds who have become upwardly mobile in the U.S., Canada, England, and other countries. In both categories of research, she is particularly interested in how ideologies (ingrained ideas about social class, gender, race, etc. that are maintained partly through the realm of mass media and popular culture) perpetuate inequality, and in how members of marginalized groups themselves cope with their devalued identities. She is working on several projects that explore these themes including some that examine images in popular media products (such as TV shows, commercials, and films).

Professor Honeycutt combines her research and teaching interests in courses such as Popular Culture, The Body/Sexuality in Society, and Research Methods (in which she and her students conduct content analyses of media products). She received a 2006 ASA Teaching Enhancement Fund grant to develop content analysis datasets. She has also completed or is working on several teaching-related writing projects for Worth Publishers, Allyn and Bacon, McGraw-Hill, and other textbook publishers. Her first book will be published in 2008.