Brian A. Monahan
Assistant Professor
Department of Sociology
203C East Hall
Iowa State University
Ames, IA 50011
Phone: 515-294-8379
Fax: 515-294-2303
bmonahan@iastate.edu
Educational Background:
Ph.D. University of Delaware
M.S. Virginia Commonwealth University
B.A. Radford University
Teaching Interests:
I have taught a range of criminal justice and sociology courses, including: Police and Society; Deviant Behavior; Introduction to Criminal Justice; Criminology; Introduction to Sociology; Crowds, Cults, and Revolutions (Collective Behavior). Check back for information about new courses in development!
Research Interests:
My substantive interests span deviance, crime, mass media, and social problems. I use a symbolic interactionist framework to explore topics in these areas, often incorporating a social constructionist perspective in my work. My research draws primarily upon qualitative methodologies, such as content analysis and interviews.
Current Research:
- A multi-disciplinary study of how would-be sexual offenders utilize the Internet to initiate and orchestrate their offenses (i.e., how they identify, groom and liaison with potential victims).
- An examination of the emotional and interactional tensions that crime and deviance researchers often encounter when doing qualitative field research and the strategies and techniques that researchers can use to identify and successfully negotiate these issues in their own research.
- An analysis of NBCs To Catch A Predator series.
- A study of contemporary shifts in how mainstream news is gathered, organized and presented to media audiences and the implications these shifts have for how we make sense of the events, issues, and individuals of our time.
- Research on the social construction of September 11 (i.e., the processes by which the terrorist attacks and their aftermath were transformed into the more politically- and morally-charged event signifier of 9/11)
Recent Publications:
How Close is Too Close? Balancing Closeness and Detachment in Qualitative Research. (with Shana L. Maier). (forthcoming in Deviant Behavior).
"Exploring the Media-Social Problems Relationship." 2008
Dispatches From the Field: Negotiating Difference and Diversity in Criminological Research. (with Shana L. Maier). 2007.
