Rate My Professor Karla Erickson

Karla A. Erickson is the Rosenfield Professor of Social Studies and Professor of Sociology at Grinnell College, where she chairs the Sociology Department and holds an affiliation with American Studies. She earned a Ph.D. in American Studies with a minor in Feminist Studies from the University of Minnesota in 2004, an M.A. in Liberal Studies from Hamline University in 1998, and a B.A. in English and Women’s Studies from Illinois Wesleyan University in 1995. Her academic career includes positions as instructor at St. Olaf College and the University of Minnesota before joining Grinnell College as Assistant Professor of Sociology from 2004 to 2010, advancing to Associate Professor from 2010 to 2015, and full Professor since 2015. She has also served as Associate Dean since 2015, chaired American Studies and Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies, and coordinated the Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellowship Program.

A feminist ethnographer of labor, Erickson studies interaction, care, and community in market and institutional settings, with research interests spanning elder care, aging and death, human-machine relations, AI, automation, critical race theory, and technology's social effects. Her books include How We Die Now: Intimacy and the Work of Dying (Temple University Press, 2013), which examines death competence among end-of-life workers; The Hungry Cowboy: Service and Community in a Neighborhood Restaurant (University Press of Mississippi, 2009), analyzing community building in a restaurant; and co-edited Feminist Waves, Feminist Generations: Life Histories of a Movement (University of Minnesota Press, 2007). Peer-reviewed publications appear in Journal of Contemporary Ethnography ("Knowing Death Well," 2016), Research in the Sociology of Work (2010), Teaching Sociology (2010), Ethnography (2005), and Symbolic Interaction (2004). She has contributed articles to Scientific American, Salon, The Washington Post, Wired, and others. Her current project, Messy Humans: A Sociology of Human/Machine Relations, explores AI's social implications. Erickson received the Harris Faculty Fellowship (2008-2009), Competitive Faculty Research Leave (2012), and Center for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship (2020-2021). She edited The Midwest Sociologist (2007-2011), reviewed for multiple journals and presses, and serves on boards for Grinnell Regional Medical Center and Grinnell Community Day Care and Preschool.