Faculty

Alford Young, Jr. is the Edgar G. Epps Collegiate Professor of Sociology, Professor of AfroAmerican Studies, Arthur F. Thurnau Professor, and U-M Sociology Department Chair. He completed his Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Chicago in 1996.  He also received his M.A in Sociology at the University of Chicago in 1992, and his B.A. in Sociology, Psychology, and African American Studies (with honors) at Wesleyan University in 1988.  His primary area of research has been on low-income African American men, where his emphasis has been on how they construct understandings of various aspects of social reality (i.e., notions of how social mobility, social inequality, and social structure unfolds in American society, of good jobs and work opportunity, of fatherhood and family living).  Young has published The Minds of Marginalized Black Men: Making Sense of Mobility, Opportunity, and Future Life Chances (Princeton University Press 2004) and various articles on the worldviews and ideologies of these men.  He is completing a manuscript entitled, “From the Edge of the Ghetto: African Americans and the World of Work” and also working on a follow-up manuscript to The Minds of Marginalized Black Men that examines how African American men who were reared in poverty but who have engaged extreme upward mobility as young adults discuss learning to navigate of race and class-based constraints over the course of their lives.  Finally, Young coordinates the Scholars Network on Masculinity and the Well-Being of African American Men, which is an assembly of mid-career scholars in the humanities, social sciences, and applied and professional fields designed to influence social policy and broader public understanding of the cultural dimensions of the condition of African American men.

Ph.D. and M.A. University of Chicago