Arlene Stein teaches courses on the sociology of gender, sexuality, culture, religion, and identities. She is the author of three books and the editor of two collections of essays. Among them is The Stranger Next Door: The Story of a Small Community’s Battle Over Sex, Faith, and Civil Rights (Beacon), an ethnographic study of a conservative campaign against gay/lesbian rights and its impact upon one community. The book won the American Anthropological Association’s Ruth Benedict Award and an Honor Award from the American Library Association. Sex and Sensibility: Stories of a Lesbian Generation (University of California), an earlier work, examines the impact of feminism on women’s sexual identities. A collection of her essays, Shameless: Sexual Dissidence in American Culture (NYU), was published in 2006. She received the Simon and Gagnon Award for career contributions to the study of sexualities, given by the American Sociological Association. She has two current research projects: the first is a study of trauma and family memories; the second concerns religious expression in public schools. She serves on the graduate faculty of the Women’s and Gender Studies program at Rutgers, and previously taught at the University of Oregon and the University of Essex.