Retirement Date: 06-30-2022

Education

Ph.D. in Sociology, Cornell University

B.A. in Sociology, Syracuse University

Research Interests

Immigration and Diasporas, Trauma, Collective Memory, Narrative Analysis, Gendered Institutions.

Biographical Notes

Professor Gerson is on the faculty in the Departments of Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies and an affiliate faculty in the Department of Jewish Studies. A recipient of a residential research fellowship at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, She is co-editor of Sociology Confronts the Holocaust: Memories, Identities and Diasporas (Duke University Press, 2007). Currently, she is completing a book manuscript on German Jewish forced emigration during the Nazi era. Using feminist theories of intersectionality, and relying on archival evidence as well as in-depth interviews, she is analyzing how German Jewish immigrants who arrived in New York between 1933 and 1941 understood various aspects of their identities. This project follows earlier research on work and family structures that compares home-and office-based employment among clerical workers in the service sector.

Professor Gerson's publications include: "In Between States: National Identity Practices among German Jewish Immigrants" published in Political Psychology 22 (2001); "Work, Family, and Stress: Does Home-based Employment Make a Difference?" with Lorraine Davies in Sex Roles (2001); and "Postmodernism, Institutional Change and Academic Workers: A Sociology of knowledge," with Thomas Rudel in Social Science Quarterly 80 (1999).

The recipient of a number of prestigious honors, Professor Gerson hasreceived awards from the Lucius N. Littauer Foundation, the American Sociological Association, and the National Science Foundation to conduct research on life during and after the Holocaust. In 2017 -2018, Professor Gerson has been invited to be a senior residential fellow atthe Mandel Center at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.

At the graduate level she teaches courses in Catastrophe and Collective Memory; Narrative Analysis; and Gender Theory.  At the undergraduate level she regularly teaches Sociology of Gender, Research Methods, Immigration and selected topics courses.