Shifting the Center Understanding Contemporary Families

The author is a proud sponsor of the 2020 SAGE Keith Roberts Teaching Innovations Award―enabling graduate students and early career faculty to attend the annual ASA pre-conference teaching and learning workshop.

Now with SAGE Publishing!

The widely-popular anthology Shifting the Center: Understanding Contemporary Families is a carefully selected collection of the most important family scholars and topics in the study of the contemporary family today. In the new Fifth Edition, Susan J. Ferguson includes articles from the leading family journals and excerpts from a number of classic book-length studies. The readings address the intersectional nature of families, illustrate well how the institution of the family is changing, and push students’ critical reading and thinking skills.

New to this Edition

• Added readings on LGBTQ families that challenge the heteronormative ideal of family in the United States.
• An updated Families in Poverty section includes some of the most important scholarship in sociology right now such as Matthew Desmond′s "Severe Deprivation in America: An Introduction" and H. Luke Shaefer, Kathryn Edin, and Elizabeth Talbert′s "Understanding the Dynamics of $2-a-Day Poverty in the United States."
• Expanded coverage of Racial-Ethnic diversity deconstructs white, middle-class families as the norm.
• Increased coverage of immigrant families.

Susan J. Ferguson is a professor of sociology at Grinnell College, where she regularly teaches a seminar on the family. Ferguson also teaches Introduction to Sociology, and her critically acclaimed anthology, Mapping the Social Landscape: Readings in Sociology (SAGE Publications, Ninth Edition, 2021) is used in introductory sociology classes around the country. Ferguson also teaches a first-year seminar, courses on the sociology of health and illness and global health, and a seminar on intersectionality and identity. Ferguson has published research in the areas of medical sociology and on the family. Her co-edited book Breast Cancer: Society Shapes an Epidemic (Palgrave, 2000) is highly praised by medical practitioners and health activists alike. Ferguson also has an anthology on social inequality, Race, Gender, Sexuality, and Social Class: Dimensions of Inequality and Identity (SAGE Publications, Third Edition, 2020). In addition, Ferguson is the general editor of a series of research monographs on the family, Contemporary Family Perspectives (SAGE Publications). During fall 2016, Ferguson taught three courses on the inaugural Colorado State University Semester at Sea voyage, including the Sociology of Gender, Introduction to Sociology, and Global Studies. In 2018, Ferguson received the ASA Hans O. Mauksch Award for Contributions to Undergraduate Teaching, and in 2021, she received the ASA Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award. Ferguson currently is working on several national projects related to the sociology curriculum.