This mainstream, best-selling text is noted for its especially strong integration of compelling and engaging "Lived Experiences" - extended examples that focus on various social issues to illustrate chapter coverage. These extended examples are introduced with the social issue or application that opens each chapter and are then carried throughout the chapter in various boxes, features, and exercises. Kendall's text is also known for its exceptional coverage of current social issues, along with its integration of race, class, gender, and age perspectives. The author includes diverse theoretical viewpoints, including feminist theory. The author's vivid, applied, personal writing style engages students, and her compelling everyday examples make sociology particularly relevant to the diverse student population of today. The author shows students that sociology involves important questions and issues that they confront both personally and vicariously.
Diana Kendall received a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was invited to membership in Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society.
Her areas of specialization and primary research interests are sociological theory, race/class/gender studies, and the sociology of medicine. Her articles and presented papers primarily focus on the scholarship of teaching and on an examination of U.S. women of the upper classes across racial and ethnic groups.
In addition to Social Problems in a Diverse Society, she is the author of The Power of Good Deeds: Privileged Women and the Social Reproduction of the Upper Class (Rowman & Littlefield, 2002) andFraming Class: Media Representations of Wealth and Poverty in America(Rowman & Littlefield, 2005).
Diana Kendall is currently Professor of Sociology at Baylor University, where she has taught a variety of courses, including Introduction to Sociology, Sociological Theory (undergraduate and graduate), Sociology of Medicine, and Race, Class, and Gender. Previously, she enjoyed many years of teaching sociology and serving as chair of the Social and Behavioral Science Division at Austin Community College. Professor Kendall is actively involved in national and regional sociological associations, including the American Sociological Association, Sociologists for Women in Society, the Society for the Study of Social Problems, the Southern Sociological Society, and the Southwestern Sociological Association.
