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Lisa M. Nunn, PhD

Assistant Professor, Sociology

Lisa Michele Nunn joined the Department of Sociology at the University of San Diego as an Assistant Professor in 2009.  Professor Nunn teaches largely in the Department’s Community, Urbanization, and Culture concentration.  Her research areas include: Sociology of Education; Organizations; Cultural Sociology; Gender and Sexuality; Identity; Visual Sociology; and Social Psychology.

Education

Professor Nunn earned her B.A. in Literature and Theater from Whittier College in 1997.  She earned her M.A. in Sociology in 2005 and her Ph.D. in Sociology in 2009 from the University of California, San Diego.

Scholarly and Creative Work

Professor Nunn is currently working on a book manuscript based on her dissertation: “Identity and the Pursuit of School Success: Understandings of Intelligence and Effort in Three High Schools.”  This manuscript investigates how both schools (organizations) and students (individuals) refine and adapt cultural ideas about academic success, and how this process perpetuates existing social inequality in educational attainment. From the same research project, Professor Nunn has published “Classrooms as Racialized Spaces: Dynamics of Collaboration, Tension, and Student Attitudes in Urban and Suburban High Schools” in Urban Education. She is also working on a second article: “Intelligence and the Pursuit of School Success: A Symbolic Interactionist Perspective.”

Professor Nunn is active in the field of Visual Sociology.  In 2010 she completed a seven-year longitudinal project which produced a sociological film titled, Excluded: Immigration Struggles of a Gay, Bi-National Couple.  The 46-minute documentary-style film chronicles one bi-national couple (one partner is a U.S. citizen and the other is German) as they navigate legal restrictions that prevent gay and lesbian Americans from obtaining visas to bring their foreign partners into the U.S..  The film was presented at the Visual Sociology session of the American Sociological Association conference in 2010, and featured in the Fallbrook Film Festival in April 2011 in Fallbrook, California.  The entire film can be viewed online at www.ExcludedTheMovie.com .  Professor Nunn distributes Excluded widely to academic institutions and LGBTQ community centers for education and advocacy.  She is currently working on a related paper titled: “Visual Sociology as Public Sociology: A Case for Sociological Film.”

Teaching Interests

Professor Nunn teaches Introduction to Sociology, Quantitative Methods, and upper-division courses in the Community, Urbanization, and Culture concentration, such as Sociology of Education and Social Institutions.