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Research keywords:
Intellectual property law and policy, cultural sociology, economic sociology, sociology of law, social theory

Dissertation title:
Properties of Color: How Corporations Came to Own the Visible Spectrum

Research statement:
Is it possible for a corporation to own a color? This dissertation shows the surprising answer to be yes as it traces color’s assimilation into the intellectual property regime over the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Beginning with the invention of synthetic dye production during the Second Industrial Revolution and concluding with the U.S. Supreme Court decision permitting single color trademarks in 1995, it examines the “properties” color has in different times and for different groups of people and how these properties were turned into property. Using color as a laboratory, the project also develops a new theoretical framework for the study of “propertization”—the process by which unowned things are made into property for the first time. It proposes that two types of normative distinctions underpin the start of legitimate chains of transfer in the form of property: 1) classification—the determination of legitimate objects of property rights; and 2) attribution—the determination of legitimate subjects of property rights.

Applying this framework to disputes in elementary-school classrooms, industrial chemical laboratories, artists’ studios, WWI battlefields, the floor of the Supreme Court, and the odd Chicago-area dry cleaner, the comparative historical analysis highlights the many ways that color becomes embedded in institutional regimes of valuation and appropriation—whether it be a matter of cultural significance, aesthetic taste, or the manufacture, marketing, and pricing of goods. Ultimately, it finds that the ascendency of “quantitative objectivity” in modern arts education, technoscience, public policy, and property law—especially the turn to economic analysis to determine social worth (and perhaps more importantly, worthlessness) in intellectual property doctrine—not only transformed color, property, and the human imagination as objects of meaning, value, morals, and interests; it allowed them to join together in novel ways.

Email: [email protected]

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Research keywords: 
Race, Ethnicity, Legacy of Slavery in the Middle East

Dissertation title:
From ‘Arabs’ to ‘Afro-Turks’: Race in the Making of Hegemonic Turkishness

Dissertation abstract:
After the abolition of slavery towards the end of the Ottoman Empire, the majority of freed black slaves who remained in Anatolia were taken to state “guesthouses” in a number of cities throughout the Empire, the most important of which was in Izmir. Despite their longstanding presence, the descendants of these black slaves — today, citizens of the Republic of Turkey — have, until recently, remained invisible both in the official historiography and in academic scholarship of history and social science. It is only since the establishment of the Association of Afro-Turks in 2006 that the black population has gained public and media attention as well as initiating a public discussion on the legacies of slavery in Turkey. I examine how the newly emerging Afro-Turk identity stands in the broader topography of identities in Turkey. Drawing on archival material, in-depth interviews with the Afro-Turk community (2014-2017), and participant observation, I seek to understand the role of race as an integral, yet subtle, element in the making of Turkishness as the dominant ethno-national identity.

Email: [email protected]

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Research keywords:
Sociology of Professions, Professionalization, Work and Occupations, Organizations

Dissertation title:
On the Cusp of Legitimacy: Professionalization in the Field of Astrology

Research profile: 
In my dissertation, On the Cusp of Legitimacy: Professionalization in the Field of Astrology, I use qualitative data that I gathered from ethnographic field research and semi-structured in-depth interviews, to develop a deeper understanding of the sociological study of professionalization in marginal and stigmatized occupations. Specifically, I examine the struggles of a group of workers, astrologers, and the strategies they use to promote themselves as professionals and the field as a profession.

The literature on professions and professionalization, work and occupations, and organizational legitimacy provides the theoretical framework for this study. I show that astrology has some characteristics of a profession, but has not achieved the autonomy and control associated with successful professionalization. In this dissertation, I compare the occupation of astrology and its professionalization efforts with that of chiropractic, acupuncture, homeopathy, and various other occupations and professions that fall under the umbrella of Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM).

In future research, I am interested in examining the relationship between workers in three industries: the occult/alternative spirituality industry; the wellness industry; and, the death care industry (more precisely, the death positive movement). When conducting my dissertation research, I was intrigued by women’s roles in each of these fields. Using the data from my dissertation research and data I will gather through ethnographic field research and semi-structured in-depth interviews, I will investigate how women’s work has historically been legitimated and delegitimated. This research is at the intersections of the sociology of professions, care work, gender studies, and social movement theory, and speaks to broader questions about women’s work under capitalism.

Email: [email protected]