Fellowship / Fellows

Elizabeth A. Armstrong

  • 2007–2008
  • Social Sciences
  • Suzanne Young Murray Fellow
  • Indiana University
Headshot of Elizabeth A. Armstrong
Photo by Tony Rinaldo

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Elizabeth A. Armstrong, a sociologist from Indiana University, is interested in sexuality, gender, culture, social movements, and higher education. Her first book, Forging Gay Identities: Organizing Sexuality in San Francisco, 1950–1994 (University of Chicago Press, 2002), explored the development of contemporary gay identities in the United States. She has also investigated how the Stonewall riots came to be viewed as the starting point of the contemporary gay movement, while earlier events in other cities were forgotten, in “Meaning and Memory: The Making of the Stonewall Myth,” coauthored with Suzanna M. Crage and published in the American Sociological Review.

As a Radcliffe fellow, Armstrong will work on a book manuscript exploring the relationship between college peer culture and social inequality. This study involved ten months of ethnographic observation on a women's floor in a coeducational residence hall and annual interviews with hall residents as they moved through college. The book will explore the extent to which students at the same institution have equal access to college social life and the advantages that may be conveyed through it. A first paper from this project, “Sexual Assault on Campus: A Multilevel, Integrative Approach to Party Rape,” coauthored with Laura Hamilton and Brian Sweeney, was published in Social Problems.

Armstrong earned her PhD from the University of California at Berkeley in 1998. She was the recipient of a National Academy of Education/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship.

Our 2023–2024 Fellows

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