Research and Teaching Interest
Gender, Racial, and Intersectional Inequities; Social Movements; Education; Social Psychology; Work and Occupations; Law and Society
Current Research
In my research, I use social psychology to understand gendered, racial, and intersectional inequities and activism with the potential to make meaningful change. My projects often fall within educational realms and are frequently motivated by my prior six-year career as a K-12 public school teacher. One of my current projects analyzes how the interplay of social-psychological factors and multilevel problems faced by K-12 educators led to the recent unprecedented wave of teacher activism across the United States. Another line of ongoing research focuses on understanding how to combat inequities faced by marginalized groups in STEM.
Academic Degrees
Courses
Selected Publications
Social construction of race and ethnicity, globalization, research methods, applied sociology, visual sociology
I am always doing research to update two textbooks, Sociology: A Global Perspective (9th edition) and Seeing Sociology (3rd edition). In Sociology: A Global Perspective I present globalization as an ever-accelerating force pulling people, groups, organization, communities and countries into a web of transnational relationships. Globalization is a social force that is experienced and launched locally. In the latest edition I emphasize key dynamics underlying globalization including industrial food, mass surveillance and a knowledge economy and the changing environment.
In Seeing Sociology: An Introduction the book capitalizes on the instructional value of photographs as tools for provoking thought and clarifying abstract concepts. Photographs, captions and text are seamlessly integrated and have equal significance in showcasing how sociologists observe, interpret and analyze the world around them. In connection to the third edition of this textbook, NKU photography major and sociology minor Rachel Ellison has been awarded an Undergraduate Research Council Award to travel to Washington, DC, the four poorest counties in Kentucky and the U.S. border with Mexico to take photographs for the textbook. We are fortune to have professor of visual arts, Barbara Houghton as consultant and mentor to Rachel.
In addition to the ongoing research associated with these textbooks, I am especially interested in the social construction of race and ethnicity in the United States. I am particularly interested in the U.S. system of racial classification and how our system of classification discourages identification with more than one race. To grasp this idea think about President Obama who is considered the first black president of the United States. For Obama to be considered black, at some point, we decided that certain ancestors (those from Africa, specifically Kenya) are much more important to his identity than the Kansas-born white appearing one who raised him. To call President Obama black we have to look past the fact that his skin shade is lighter than his biological father and close to that of his mother. Finally we have to count the African or black historical experience as more important than the European or white experience in shaping his life. I am interested in how this way of seeing race has shaped race relations and dynamics in the United States.
Demography, Sociology of Aging, Technology and Social Change, Social Stratification, Global Aging Issues and Policies, Urban Sociology, and Medical Sociology.
My major concentration and publications include areas of international aging studies between America and China, the elderly people's housing and their children's attitudes toward the arrangements for their elderly parents, evaluation studies on institutionalized care facilities and services, and the elderly and middle aged people's attitudes toward Social Security and Medicare reformation. I am also interested in the middle aged population's preparation for their future retirement, home care-giving to Alzheimer's patients and evaluations on caregivers' pressures when offering care for their family members with Alzheimer's disease. I also study cross-cultural comparisons between the development of mediated communication (email, internet, cell phone and text messaging) and people's quality of life.
Research and Teaching Interest
Culture, race and ethnicity, education
Current Research
Dr. Patterson’s primary research agenda examines diversity among U.S. arts consumers. Specifically, his work considers how education’s influence on arts participation varies by race-ethnicity, a genre’s cultural origins, and the means of consumption. His latest publication is featured in Cultural Sociology. It reveals how education’s impact on visual and performing arts attendance differs between Whites and non-Whites. Dr. Patterson’s research highlights how the Eurocentric bias in arts consumption reinforces social inequality regardless of one’s level of education.
Academic Degrees
Courses
Selected Publications
Social construction of gender and sexuality, social construction of race and ethnicity, social psychology, research methods.
