People

Alexander Byrd, Rice Affiliate
Associate Professor of History, Rice University
Ph.D., Duke University
Interests: Afro America, especially Black Life in the Atlantic World and the Jim Crow South
Contact: 713-348-2541, axb@rice.edu

Bridget Gorman, Rice Affiliate
Associate Professor of Sociology, Rice University
Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University
Interests: Racial and Gender Disparities in Physical and Mental Health
Contact: 713-348-4137, bkgorman@rice.edu

Elizabeth Long, Rice Affiliate
Professor of Sociology, Rice University
Ph.D., Brandeis University
Interests: Sociology of Culture, Study of Women and Gender, Social Theory, Qualitative Research Methods
Contact: 713-348-3483, elong@rice.edu

Jose Aranda, Rice Affiliate
Associate Professor of English, Rice University
Ph.D., Brown University
Interests: Nineteenth Century /Contemporary Chicano Literature, Early American Literature
Contact: 713-348-2447, aranda@rice.edu

Krista Comer, Rice Affiliate
Associate Professor of English, Rice University
Ph.D., Brown University
Interests: Contemporary American Literature & Culture, the American West, Feminist Theory, Youth Culture, Race Studies
Contact: 713-348-3207, kcomer@rice.edu

Richard Johnson, Rice Affiliate
Director of Sustainability, Department of Facilities Engineering and Planning, Rice University
Associate Director, Center for the Study of Environment and Society
B.S., Rice University
M. S., University of Virginia
Contact: 713-348-5003, rrj@rice.edu

Steve Murdock, Rice Affiliate
Professor of Sociology, Rice University
Ph.D., University of Kentucky
Interests: Demography, Social and Applied Demography, Migration, Rural Sociology, and Socioeconomic Impact Assessment
Contact: 713-348-4225, Steve.H.Murdock@rice.edu

Anthony B. Pinn, Rice Affiliate
Professor of Religious Studies, Rice University
Ph.D., Harvard University
Interests: African American Religions, African American Religious Thought, Religion in Popular Culture, African American Humanism
Contact: 713-348-2710, pinn@rice.edu

Holly Heard, Rice Affiliate
Research Analyst with Houston Education Research Consortium (HERC), Rice University
Ph.D., University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Interests: Families and Children, Social Demography, Life Course Studies, Adolescent Development
Contact: 713-348-3415, hheard@rice.edu

Patricia Herzog, Rice Affiliate
Dr. Patricia Snell Herzog is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research. She comes from the University of Notre Dame, where she worked for five years in the Department of Sociology and served as the Assistant Director for the Center for the Study of Religion and Society. Dr. Herzog’s recent dissertation research, entitled “People in Context: Perceptions of Social Dissonance and Community Involvement,” investigates the ways that communities respond to spatial inequality. According to her findings, social inequalities are embedded in spatially- related patterns and boundaries, which connect and exclude social groups in ways that influence life outcomes. Herzog seeks to answer how communities create and respond to these spatially stratified contexts and how members of a community respond to the constraints and opportunities to which they are exposed.
Interests: urban sociology, social satisfaction, social theory, and sociology of religion
Contact:psh2@rice.edu

Kimberly Hoang, Rice Affiliate
Dr. Hoang is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Rice University. Her appointment is supported by the Kinder Institute for Urban Resesarch and the Center for the Study of Women, Gender, and Sexuality at Rice University.
Interests: Gender and Sexuality, Globalization and Transnationalism, Sociology of Immigration, Race and Ethnicity, Social Inequality and Poverty, Ethnographic Research Methods
Contact: 713-348-3238,kayhoang@rice.edu

Emily Straus, Rice Affiliate
Emily E. Straus is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Kinder Institute for Urban Research. She holds her Ph.D. in American History from Brandeis University (2006), and her B.A. in History from the Columbia University (1995).
Interests: United States metropolitan history, the history of education, and the history of race
Contact:emily.straus@rice.edu