معرفی
Sarah Beth Kaufman is an Associate Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. A sociologist and critical criminologist, her work examines how powerful institutions including criminal justice, political, religious, and psychiatric systems influence everyday experiences, assumptions, and ideas. She previously worked as a mitigation specialist in New Orleans during the late 1990's, helping to secure reduced sentences for impoverished capital murder defendants.
Education:
- Ph.D. in Sociology, New York University
- M.A. in Sociology, Tulane University
- B.A. in Sociology, Wesleyan University
Dr. Kaufman's research focuses on the intersection of criminal justice, culture, and politics. Her work includes ethnographic studies of death penalty trials across the United States and analyses of Muslim criminalization in contemporary America. She is particularly interested in how institutions frame and respond to marginalized communities, with a focus on performance, victimization, and racialization processes. Her approach combines courtroom observation with qualitative interview methodology to examine how legal processes transform social identities.
Her publication portfolio reveals consistent engagement with criminal justice system dynamics, particularly around capital punishment and the criminalization of religious minorities. A recurring theme is how institutional processes transform social identities into criminal categories, with particular attention to performance and embodiment in legal settings. Her 2020 book American Roulette represents the first systematic ethnography of death penalty trials in the United States.
Dr. Kaufman teaches courses including Introduction to Sociology, Criminology, Deviance and Social Control, Sociology of Punishment, Sociology of Health and Illness, and Research Methods. Students who take her classes can expect to become sharper readers, writers, and critical thinkers. Prior to her current position, she taught for the Bard Prison Initiative at the Bayview Women's Correctional Facility.
