I am professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Buffalo. My research is centered in the sociology of work, while also extending into the fields of race and gender, culture, labor, law, and social policy.

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My recent book, Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment (University of California Press, 2020), analyzes four very different groups of workers:  incarcerated, workfare, college athlete, and graduate student workers. Drawing on more than 120 in-depth interviews across these four groups, in this book I uncover a new form of labor coercion--"status coercion"--and analyze its consequences for workers in America. Coerced was awarded the Max Weber Award for Distinguished Scholarship from the  American Sociological Association's section on Organizations, Occupations, and Work. 

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I am also editor of the recent book Labor and Punishment: Work In and Out of Prison (UC Press, 2021). This interdisciplinary volume examines the multiple and multi-directional intersections between the carceral state and labor and employment in the U.S. today. 

My first book, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America (Temple University Press, 2011), weaves together gender, race, class, and work in a cultural analysis of the temporary help industry and the rise of the new economy. The Temp Economy won an Honorable Mention for the Distinguished Scholarly Monograph Award from the American Sociological Association's Labor & Labor Movements Section.