Lara Foley

Lara Foley

Sociology Department ChairAssociate Professor of SociologyChapman Hall 210
918-631-2050
lara-foley@utulsa.edu

My recently published (co-authored) book, Gendering Bodies (2008), examines how people develop gender identities in part by taking up their culture’s ideologies of the body. The book explores issues of performance, surveillance, inequality and resistance. My current project examines the newly emerging occupation of Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE). Many communities are beginning to use SANEs as part of a larger Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) typically comprised of law enforcement, hospitals, rape-crisis centers, and district attorney’s offices. I am looking at the ways that SANEs make a place for themselves in these teams and the acceptance and resistance they encounter along the way. For these nurses, gender is a prominent theme in the construction of victims/patients and assailants as well as in the boundary work of the nurses and advocates who are predominantly women with physicians and law enforcement officers.

Education and Degrees Earned

  • 2001 Ph.D., Sociology, University of Florida
  • 2001 Graduate Certificate, Women’s Studies and Gender Research, University of Florida
  • 1996 M.A., Sociology, Georgia State University
  • 1994 A.B., Psychology, University of Georgia

Professional Affiliations

  • Sociologist for Women in Society
  • Society for the Study of Social Problems

Courses Taught at TU

  • Sociological Imagination (Soc 1013)
  • Crime Justic and Social Order (Soc 2123)
  • Sociology of Deviance (Soc 3243)
  • Sociology of Health Illness and Medicine (Soc 3703)
  • Sociology of Law (Soc 4013)
  • Special Topics Sociology of Bodies (Soc 4863)

Awards & Recognition

  • University of Tulsa, Women’s and Gender Studies Program, Mentor Award, 2008
  • Achievers Under 40, The Journal Record, 2008

Publications

  • Constructing the Respondent
    pp. 305-315 in J.F. Gubrium and J.A. Holstein (eds.), Handbook of Interview Research: Context and Method 2nd edition. (2012)
  • Gendering Bodies
    Crawley, Sara, Lara Foley and Constance Shehan. 2008. Gendering Bodies. New York: Rowman and Littlefield
  • Midwives, Marginality, and Public Identity
    Foley, Lara. 2005. “Midwives, Marginality, and Public Identity.” Symbolic Interaction 28(2):183-203
  • White Privilege, Color Blindness, and Services to Battered Women
    Donnelly, Denise, Kimberly J. Cook, Debra VanAusdale, and Lara Foley. 2005. "White Privilege, Color Blindness, and Services to Battered Women." Violence Against Women 11(1):6-37
  • Doing Family Values
    Broad, Kendal, Sara Crawley and Lara Foley. 2004. “Doing Family Values: Social Movement Framing, Discourse, and Interpretive Practice.” Sociological Quarterly 45(3):509-527
  • How I Became a Midwife
    Foley, Lara. 2004. “How I Became a Midwife: Identity, Biographical Work, and Legitimation in Midwives’ Work Narratives.” Pp. 87-128, in M.T. Segal, V. Demos, and J. J. Kronenfeld (eds.), Gender Perspectives on Health and Medicine: Reproduction and Sexuality. Advances in Gender Research volume 8. San Diego, CA: Elsevier JAI Press
  • Medicine as a Discursive Resource
    Foley, Lara and Chris Faircloth. 2003. "Medicine as a Discursive Resource: Legitimation in the Work Narratives of Midwives." Sociology of Health and Illness. 25(2):165-184