William A. Corsaro
William A. Corsaro is the Robert H. Shaffer Class of 1967 Endowed Chair. Bill’s research and teaching interests are in the areas of sociology of childhood, children’s peer cultures and early life transitions from a cross cultural perspective, early childhood education processes and policy, and ethnographic research methods. A third edition of his The Sociology of Childhood will be published by Pine Forge Press in 2010. It serves as an important theoretical introduction to this much neglected area in sociology. His, We’re Friends, Right?: Inside Kids’ Culture was published in 2003 by Joseph Henry Press. He carried out a seven year longitudinal ethnography of Italian children’s transition from preschool to elementary school and to middle school with his Italian colleague Luisa Molinari. This research resulted in the publication of several journal articles and the research monograph, I Compagni: Understanding Children’s Transition from Preschool to Elementary Schoolby Teachers College Press in 2005. Bill is presently working on a project in Trondheim, Norway which focuses on children’s participation in civil society. He is co-editor with Jens Qvortrup and Michael-Sebastian Honig of The Palgrave Handbook of Child Studies which was published by Palgrave Press in 2009 and which was selected as an Outstanding Academic Title, 2009 by Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries.
