Elisabeth Sheff
Ph.D. from the University of Colorado in Boulder, 2005
Assistant Professor
Sexuality, Gender, Family, Deviance, Sociology of the Body, Theory
E-mail: soceasx@langate.gsu.edu
Room : 1069
Telephone Number : (404) 413-6522
Full Vita (PDF Version)
Research and Teaching Interests
Dr. Elisabeth Sheff joined the GSU faculty in 2004 and is a member of both the Family, Health, and Lifecourse and Gender and Sexuality concentrations. Prior to joining the faculty at Georgia State, she taught at the University of Montana in Missoula. Dr. Sheff earned her PhD at the University of Colorado in Boulder (2005).
Dr. Sheff's specialty areas include sexuality, family, gender, deviance, and communities. These combine in her research on gender performances and family patterns in communities made up of people engaged in polyamory, or polys. Poly people engage in openly conducted, non-monogamous relationships with sexual and/or emotional intimacy among multiple partners. Currently Dr. Sheff is collecting and analyzing the second wave of data in a longitudinal study of polyamorous families with children, including some respondents from her initial sample and expanding the sample to encompass a larger and more diverse group of participants.
Dr. Sheff's previous research focuses on gender and sexuality. Her gender-based research examined gender-equity adjustment in academicians’ salaries, women's use of micro-lending institutions in developing nations, and gender variance in utility customer’s attitudes towards the use of rooftop, grid-tied, photovoltaic (solar electrical) cells. Sheff’s earlier research in sexuality includes a study of the intersections between and among polyamorous people and kinksters, or those who identify as kinky. Kinksters are most often linked in some way to practices of BDSM -- Bondage and Discipline, Domination and Submission, and Sadism and Masochism – previously known in a more simplified form as sadomasochism.
Dr. Sheff teaches classes in sexuality, gender, families, and social theory, with graduate courses focusing specifically on families of sexual minorities, family diversity, and sexuality. She has mentored graduate students in their examinations of a variety of topics including body modification focused on breast and penis enlargement, internet pornography focusing on women who use wheelchairs, identity formation among queer youths of color, hate speech from those who oppose same sex marriage, and kinkster’s interactions in public sex environments.
