Raj Ghoshal

As an overview of my research, here's a Wordle of my dissertation proposal:

I am interested in social inequality and social justice.  Professionally, this translates into research and teaching interests in three fields: (a) Race, Class, & Gender (especially race); (b) Cultural sociology (especially collective memory, but in other realms as well); and (c) Social movements and politics.  

Currently, my research centrally concerns social movements aimed at commemoration of historic white-on-black racial atrocities in the United States.  Why are mobilizations occuring around some historic incidents, but not others? Under what conditions might these movements facilitate broader engagement in present-day racial justice issues? Are there instances in which they may divert attention from present day racial justice struggles? How can we understand the roles that governments, elites, and white Americans have played these struggles?  These questions are at the heart of my dissertation as well as in one under-review paper and one in-progress paper.  Specifically, my dissertation uses rare-events logistic regression, qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA), and case study techniques to investigate the origins and trajectories of these commemorative movements.  

In addition to this research, I have published research on narratives in the same-sex marriage debate, have a co-authored empirical paper under review (R&R) examining the demographics of protest in the United States for the last 40 years, and have a co-authored theoretical paper in progress about privilege.  "Back burner" and future projects include a two-part examination of mainstream media frames for discussing race.