Joanne Golann
Joanne W. Golann '04 is an assistant professor of public policy and education at Peabody College, Vanderbilt University. Trained as a sociologist and an ethnographer, she seeks to understand how schools and families transmit cultural skills, behaviors and habits to children. Her research has been published in Sociology of Education, American Educational Research Journal, and American Behavioral Scientist, and been featured in The New York Times, Education Week, the Washington Post, the Atlantic, HuffPost and The Guardian.

www.joannegolann.com.

Name:
Joanne Wang Golann ‘04

Current Home:
Nashville, TN

Place of Birth:
Chicago, IL

Education:
BA, Amherst College; MA, University of Chicago; PhD, Princeton University

Why did you choose to come to Amherst?
I was deciding between Amherst and that Ivy League school in Massachusetts. And I had the idea that if I wanted to become a newspaper editor, I should go to that other school. But if I wanted to become a professor, I should go to Amherst. Well, here I am, a professor, many years later.

Most memorable or most influential class at Amherst:
Professor Townsend’s course on the Romantics was one of my favorites. His enthusiasm for the Romantic poets was contagious. It was my introduction to Blake, Wordsworth, Keats and so many others. I took those poems with me, teaching them to local teachers during my Fulbright year in Taiwan and reciting them while caring for a friend’s grandmother.

Most memorable or most influential professor:
Professor Upton was the most memorable. I took his course on Medieval art. I still remember him talking to us about the “intimation of the reconciliation of contradictory possibilities” and the differences between the imminent and the immanent. I took a train to Ravenna to see the mosaics he showed us. I went to Chartres to visit the cathedral.

Research Interests?
Urban school reform, school discipline, charter schools, parenting, culture.

Awards and Prizes

  • Amherst College Johnson ’38 Public Service Fellowship
  • Amherst College Class of ’54 Commitment to Teaching Fellowship
  • National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Dissertation Fellowship
  • Maureen T. Hallinan Graduate Student Paper Award, Sociology of Education SIG, American Educational Research Association
  • Emerging Education Policy Scholars Fellow
  • Discovery Grant, Vanderbilt University
  • Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline, American Sociological Association

Favorite Book:
Portrait of a Lady, Henry James

Favorite Author:
Henri Nouwen, the Catholic priest

Tips for aspiring writers?
I write in the academic realm. For academics, my piece of advice would be to say what you want to say in a clear way. As one of my graduate school advisors put it, a five-cent word is often better than its five-dollar synonym.

Tell us a bit about your path to becoming an author:
Scripting the Moves was a decade in the making. It began as my sociology dissertation. Unlike writing a dissertation, writing a book requires threading a coherent argument from start to finish. It also takes learning about the broader contexts of the research—in my case, charter schools, school discipline and market-based education reform. And then there’s the writing style. It took me at least a year to rid myself of academic jargon and develop the right tone and voice for the book. The path to becoming an author is littered with endless drafts but traversed with a community of scholars and friends.