Brittany BattleThis email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

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Curriculum Vitae

Brittany is a Ford Foundation Doctoral Program Fellow for 2018-2019 and an ASA Minority Fellowship Program award recipient for 2017-2018. She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology (Law & Society concentration), Black American Studies, and Women's Studies from University of Delaware in 2008, a Master's degree in African American Studies from Temple University in 2012, and a Master's degree in Sociology from Rutgers University – New Brunswick in 2015. Her research interests include social and family policy, poverty and (un)deservingness, conceptualizations of family and parenthood, courts (criminal and family), and culture and cognition. Her MA thesis, “War Widows and Welfare Queens: The Semiotics of Deservingness in the American Welfare System,” used a sociology of perception framework to examine the cognitive underpinnings of distinctions between the “deserving” and “undeserving poor” and creates a conceptual model to understand “deservingness” along axes of morality and eligibility for benefits (forthcoming, Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Sociology). In another paper, “Deservingness, Deadbeat Dads, and Responsible Fatherhood: Child Support Policy and Rhetorical Conceptualizations of Poverty, Welfare and the Family,” published in Symbolic Interaction, she examines the relationship between presidential rhetoric and the evolution of child support policy since the 1970s. Her dissertation, “Deadbeat Dads, Single Moms, and Broken Homes?: Parents’ Experiences with the Child Support System,” examines the U.S. child support system through observations of family court proceedings and in-depth interviews with individuals involved in the system. The project explores areas such as the use of shaming and stigma, the conceptualization of parenthood and family, and the criminal and financial consequences of involvement with the system. In addition, she is the Director of the Sociology Department's Multi-Generational Mentoring (MGM) Program which provides support and resources for undergraduate students interested in attending graduate school.