American Sociological Association: Evelyn Nakano Glenn Award Statement

Evelyn Nakano Glenn Award Statement

Evelyn Nakano Glenn, University of California-Berkeley

The Jessie Bernard Award is given annually to a sociologist in recognition of a body of scholarly work that has enlarged the horizons of sociology to encompass fully the role of women in society. The 2005 Jessie Bernard Award was presented to Evelyn Nakano Glenn.

Glenn's teaching and research interests center on comparative race and gender studies focuses especially on political economy, immigration, labor, and citizenship. She has also worked in the areas of critical race and feminist theory and trans-disciplinary methods.

Glenn’s work has been instrumental in the development of the analysis of the intersections of race, class, and gender. She has argued that we must deal with an integrative framework in which multiple categories of difference are defined as mutually constituted systems of relationships—including norms, symbols, and practices—organized around perceived differences. Within this framework, race, class, gender, and sexuality are relational concepts whose construction involves both representational and social structural processes and in which power is a constitutive element.

Her work on Japanese American women’s domestic work as immigrants and as war brides is groundbreaking. Her most recent publication on the impact of race and gender on American citizenship and labor fills an important void in the literature of gender and work. Glenn’s work is forcing us to re-examine the sexual division of labor through a racial lens.

Glenn, an author of numerous articles and books, is Professor of Women’s Studies and Ethnic Studies. She is also a founding director of the Center for Race and Gender, an organized research unit. Evelyn Nakano Glenn is truly a scholar whose career embodies the spirit of Jessie Bernard.