Camille Charles Named a Fellow by Straus Institute

Camille Z. Charles, Edmund J. and Louise W. Kahn Term Professor in the Social Sciences, has been selected as a 2013-14 fellow by The Straus Institute for the Advanced Study of Law & Justice at New York University. Each year, the Straus Institute brings fellows from around the world to facilitate high level research and scholarship on topics falling within a broad definition of law and justice. This year, the fellows will address the topic “Racial, Ethnic, and Economic Segregation.”

Charles is a professor of sociology and Africana studies, Director of Penn’s Center for Africana Studies, and holds an appointment at the Graduate School of Education. She is the author of numerous publications and books, including Won’t You Be My Neighbor: Race, Class and Residence in Los Angeles and The Source of the River: The Social Origins of Freshmen at America’s Selective Colleges and Universities. Her research interests are in the areas of urban inequality, racial attitudes and intergroup relations, racial residential segregation, minorities in higher education, and racial identity. She is a member of the editorial boards of the American Sociological Review and the DuBois Review: Social Science Research on Race, and a past chair of the Penn Faculty Senate.

During her fellowship at the Straus Institute, Charles will complete a book-length manuscript on the diversity of black students at selective colleges and universities in the United States.  She will also work to develop a longer-term project that explores racial inequality in Philadelphia, modeled theoretically and methodologically after Du Bois’s classic study The Philadelphia Negro. An important component of this project will be the use of mapping and spatial statistics, as well as the production of policy-relevant scholarship and the training of undergraduate and graduate students in the social sciences.