Specialization:
social movements, gender, sexuality, culture, health and mental health
Education:
Ph.D., Ohio State University
Bio:
Verta Taylor's research focuses on gender, sexualities, and social movements. She has published award winning books and articles on a wide range of topics, including women’s, LGBTQ, and self-help movements; postpartum depression; drag queen identities and performances; same-sex marriage; and queer identities. Her research has made influential contributions to understanding the role of gender, collective identity, emotions, and social movement culture in social protest and collective action. Taylor’s theory of social movement abeyance, based on research on the US women’s movement, has been used widely by scholars to understand how other activist networks, including rightwing extremists, adapt and manage to hold on during hostile political contexts only to reemerge as mass movements when the political and cultural context shifts.
Taylor’s work has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Psychological Association Foundation, among others. Taylor was the 2011 recipient of the American Sociological Association’s Jessie Bernard Award, and in 2008, she received the John D. McCarthy Lifetime Achievement Award in Social Movements and the American Sociological Association’s Simon and Gagnon Award for the Lifetime of Scholarly Contributions to the Study of Sexuality. She recently completed the 11th edition of her pioneering co-edited gender studies text, Feminist Frontiers.