Faculty Biography - Jennifer Lois

Associate Professor
Sociology Department
Western Washington University
Bellingham, WA 98225-9081
Arntzen Hall 530; (360) 650-3007
Fax: 360-650-7295
E-mail: Jennifer.Lois@wwu.edu

Jen Lois was born and raised in the suburbs of New York City. After receiving her B.A. in Latin American Studies from Dartmouth College in 1989, she moved to Vail, Colorado to teach skiing. She returned to school in 1993 and in 2000, received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Colorado-Boulder.

Professor Lois is a field researcher, observing first-hand and participating in interesting areas of social life. In her first project, she spent six years studying a volunteer, mountain-environment search and rescue group. Through this research, she became interested in gender, heroism, and the sociology of emotions, focusing much of her work on these issues (for example how the rescuers controlled their own and others’ emotions during dangerous and traumatic rescues, and why the heroic identity associated with the rescue group was a powerful pull to social conformity). This project turned into a book, which was published in 2003 by New York University Press, and in 2006 was honored with the Outstanding Recent Contribution Award from the American Sociological Association’s Sociology of Emotions Section. Professor Lois is now studying homeschoolers, focusing mainly on how they come to define family roles and arrange their family lives to accommodate their choice to educate their children at home.  She will be turning this project into a book, to be published in 2010.

Professor Lois teaches courses in gender, deviance, social psychology, and field research methods. In her free time, she enjoys getting outside with her husband, son Calvin, daughter Marti, and their “search pug” Francie.

Recent Publications

Lois, Jennifer. 2005. “Gender and Emotion Management in the Stages of Edgework.” Pp.117-152 in Edgework: The Sociology of Risk-Taking, edited by Stephen Lyng. New York: Routledge.

Lois, Jennifer. 2003. Heroic Efforts: The Emotional Culture of Search and Rescue Volunteers. New York: New York University Press.

Lois, Jennifer. 2001. “Peaks and Valleys: The Gendered Emotional Culture of Edgework.” Gender and Society 15: 381-406.

Lois, Jennifer. 2001. “Managing Emotions, Intimacy, and Relationships in a Volunteer Search and Rescue Group.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 30:131-79.

Lois, Jennifer. 1999. “Socialization to Heroism: Individualism and Collectivism in a Voluntary Search and Rescue Group.” Social Psychology Quarterly 62:117-35.