Erin O’Connor
Associate Professor of Sociology
Chair, Department of Politics and Human Rights
Erin O’Connor is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Politics and Human Rights. She specializes in the fields of ethnography, culture, art, work, knowledge, body, phenomenology, body, and craft. Her book manuscript, Firework: art, craft, and self among glassblowers, draws from four years of ethnographic research in a glassblowing studio to analyze the meaning of contemporary craft in industrial and knowledge economies. Specifically, it descriptively reveals how relations among body, materials, and others inform the emergence of self, community, and meaning while also investigating the socio-political meaning of craft over time.
Dr. O’Connor has also conducted an ethnographic analysis of creativity in interdisciplinary scientific research as a researcher at the Social Science Research Council and published in the journals Thesis Eleven, Qualitative Sociology Review, Qualitative Sociology, Qualitative Research, and Ethnography, as well as in edited volumes such as Practicing Culture and Embodying Sociology: Retrospect, Progress and Prospects, Studio Studies: Operations, topologies, and displacements and Craftwork as Problem Solving: Ethnographic Studies of Design and Making. In class, she uses her areas of expertise as lenses through which to investigate social inequality and human rights as regards race, ethnicity, sexuality, gender, and class among other issues. She also serves as Faculty Advisor for the Bedford Hills Club, which supports the MMC college program at the Bedford Hills Prison.
Dr. O’Connor enjoys the outdoors and creating. She lives in Brooklyn with her family.
Title/Position
Chair, Department of Politics and Human Rights
Department
Phone
Degree(s)
Ph.D., New School for Social Research
M.A., New School for Social Research
Honors, B.A., Michigan State University
Recent Work
2017. “Touching Tacit Knowledge: handwork as ethnographic method in a glassblowing studio”. Qualitative Research 17(2), 217-230.
2016. “The Prototype: Problem Work in the relationship between Designer, Artist, and Gaffer in Glassblowing” in Craftwork as Problem Solving: Ethnographic Studies of Design and Making. Ed. Trevor Marchand. London: Ashgate.
2016. “Inter- to Intracorporeality: The haptic hotshop heat of a glassblowing studio” in Studio Studies: Operations, Topologies & Displacements. Eds. Igancio Farias and Alex Wiley. London: Routledge.
2012 “Cross Disciplinary Literacy in the Age of Apps and Mobile Devices,” with Rebecca Mushtare and Millie Burns, in Emerging Pedagogies for the New Millennium. Network: A Journal of Faculty Development (www.nyu.edu/frn/publications/emerging.pedagogies/index.html).
2012 “Saber hecho carne: la experiencia dl sentido y la busqueda de expertise en el soplado de vidrio”” in Hacia una nueva sociología cultural: Mapas, dramas y prácticas. C. E. Benzecry (ed). Buenos Aires: Quilmes University Press.
2009 “The Act of Collaborative Creation and the Art of Integrative Creativity: Originality, Disciplinarity and Interdisciplinarity in Science.” Co-Authored with Diana Rhoten. Thesis Eleven (96(1)).
2007 “The Centripetal Force of Expression: Drawing Embodied Histories into Glassblowing.” Qualitative Sociology Review, “Ethnographies of Artistic Work,” Edited by Howard Becker and Marie Buscatto.
2007 “Hot Glass: The Calorific Imagination of Practice in Glassblowing.” In Craig Calhoun and Richard Sennett (eds.), Practicing Culture. London: Routledge.
2007 “Embodied Knowledge in Glassblowing: meaning and the struggle towards proficiency (modified reprint).” In Chris Shilling (ed.), Embodying Sociology: Retrospect, Progress and Prospects, The Sociological Review Monograph.
2006 “Glassblowing Tools: Extending the Body towards Practical Knowledge and Informing a Social World.” Qualitative Sociology, 29(2).
2005 “Embodied Knowledge: Meaning and the Struggle Towards Proficiency in Glassblowing.” Ethnography 6(2).
Research
Work, Craft, Art, Ethnography, Culture, Knowledge, Social Theory, Craft, Body, Environment, Phenomenology, Methods
Teaching
Introduction to Sociology
Art, Politics & Society
Culture & Ideology
Ethnography
Great Social Thinkers
Environmental Justice
Radical Labor and Artisan Movements
EcoCulture & Sustainability
Foundations of Social and Political Inquiry
Research Methods in the Social Sciences
Office Hours
Spring 2019
Mondays and Tuesdays, 10:00-11:30pm
Wednesdays, 1:00-3:30pm
& by appointment