Rate My Professor Gabrielle Raley-Karlin

Gabrielle Raley-Karlin is an Associate Professor of Anthropology-Sociology at Knox College, where she has taught since 2010. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2010, an M.A. in Sociology from UCLA in 2002, and a B.A. in Interdisciplinary Social Science from The Evergreen State College in 1995. Her research connects large-scale social forces—such as markets, power, price, beauty, and love—with the minutiae of daily meaning-making and interpretation. Currently, she studies the commercial art sector, exploring how graphic artists negotiate the dual demands of creating products that are both artistically compelling and marketable, avoiding extremes that might alienate audiences or compromise creativity.

In her teaching, Raley-Karlin emphasizes bridging macrostructural phenomena with micro-level experiences. Her courses cover the sociology of culture, sociology of art, work and occupations, social theory, inequality, and qualitative methods. Students examine how everyday talk and interactions complicate institutional dynamics and how prevailing notions of race, ethnicity, gender, and sexuality sustain broader inequities. Raley-Karlin has earned recognition through awards including membership in the National Center for Faculty Diversity and Development's Faculty Success Program (2013), UCLA Graduate Division Dissertation Year Fellowship (2008-2009), Sage/Pine Forge Teaching Innovation/Professional Development Award (2008), Labor & Employment Research Fund Dissertation Fellowship (2005-2006), American Sociological Association Teaching Enhancement Grant (2004-2005), and various UCLA research mentorships. Her publications feature a review of David Hesmondhalgh and Sarah Baker's Creative Labour: Media Work in Three Cultural Industries in Contemporary Sociology (41.1, 2012: 87-88); "Avenue to Adulthood: Teenage Pregnancy and the Meaning of Motherhood in Poor Communities," in American Families: A Multicultural Reader, 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2007; reprinted in Sociology: Exploring the Architecture of Everyday Life Readings, 8th ed., 2010); and "No Good Choices: Teenage Childbearing, Concentrated Poverty, and Welfare Reform" in the same reader (1999). She belongs to the American Sociological Association and Society for the Study of Social Problems, and on campus serves on the Campus Diversity Committee, mentors McNair Scholars, speaks for TRIO programs, and advises the Anthropology-Sociology Club.