Resources

What is “law and society” or the “sociology of law”? My answer, plus links to more information, can be found here.

Workshop slides and other resources from me for qualitative and historical/archival methods can be found here.

My syllabi and brief course descriptions can be found here.

My productivity, writing, and methods book recommendations can be found here.

My twitter archive of advice about productivity, writing, publishing, qualitative methods, research design, etc., can be found here.

My go-to productivity tools (planning and time tracking), along with explanations, can be found here.

General life/productivity advice for students, junior scholars, everyone can be found here.

Really good general academic advice for grad students can be found here.

My approach to mentorship and general advice for grad students can be found here. This document explains how I mentor students, my expectations for our interactions, as well as links back here for  advice on navigating grad school and academia. Even if you are not my student, you may find this document useful to compare (just see what another professor’s approach is) or to pick up different or additional advice to supplement your own mentorship (if there is a conflict, go with what your own advisor recommends since they will know more about your subfield, program, and trajectory and have their own style and expectations).

My comments in a short talk on the hidden curriculum can be found here.

My teaching philosophy (primarily for undergraduate students) can be found here.

Post-Undergrad Job Market. My take on how an undergraduate education (generally and in sociology and criminology) contributes to a student’s job prospects and the importance of financial literacy (which we don’t typically teach) can be found here.

Disciplinary Identity Issues. Click here for an introduction to a series of responses from leading scholars responding to the issues embedded in the question, “Are you a Criminologist or a Sociologist?” (Even if you don’t see yourself straddling the criminology-sociology divide, the issues these posts raise should sound familiar to folks straddling other disciplinary divides.) Click here for my remarks for a panel (organized by Professor Sida Liu) at ASA on Becoming a Sociologist of Law; in these remarks, I discuss my career trajectory and some of the tensions I’ve faced as an interdisciplinary scholar, as well as my own confusion about what the sociology of law is, which I’ve since tried to answer in the very first link on this page.

Advice for navigating academic conferences can be found here.

Reading Guide: written and video advice on how to read journal articles (and book chapters). Click here for a written guide on how to read academic, non-textbook books and articles that I prepared for my undergraduate students. While this document is intended for undergrads, graduate students might find it useful as well. Click here for a video explaining how to read academic, non-textbook books and articles that I prepared for one of my classes. (I recorded this when I had to cancel class one day because I was sick, so you can hear me getting stuffier over the course of the video (sorry!). There’s also a bit of stuff specific to my class, but it gives you a window into how I teach my classes. It picks up in between two other videos that set up the day and set up for next class.) Click here for the twitter thread version! (An asynchronous lecture version that contains links to the reading, the video, and different websites for the twitter thread version can be found here.)

A guide to writing essays (for undergraduate students) can be found here.

How to succeed in college. A video can be found here; I’m the last panelist. An expanded written version that combines my comments from that talk with what I tell my students each semester can be found here.

My advice on how and when to try to reform your department/university/organization can be found here.