William A. Corsaro
William A. Corsaro is Robert H. Shaffer
Class of 1967 Endowed Professor. Bill’s research and teaching interests are
in the areas of sociology of childhood, children’s peer culture from a cross
cultural perspective, early childhood education processes and policy, and
ethnographic research methods. The second edition of his book, The Sociology
of Childhood was published in 2005 by Pine Forge Press. 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. His current research is with Italian colleague, Luisa
Molinari, and is on children’s transition from home to school in the U.S.
and Italy. They have published several papers from this research in leading
Italian and other international journals and in Social Psychology Quarterly
(2000). Their monograph, I Compagni: Understanding Children’s Transition
from Preschool to Elementary School was published by Teacher’s College Press
in 2005. Bill has worked closely with several former graduate students in
the department including Kathryn Hadley, Hilary Aydt, Angela Huckelba, Laura
Fingerson, Elizabeth Nelson, and Heather Sugioka. They have published
several papers stemming from the 1998-1999 SRP in The American Behavioral
Scientist (2003), Social Psychology Quarterly (2003), The Sociology of
Education (2003), and The Handbook of Social Psychology (2003) on children’s
cultures and their relation to transition to elementary school. Bill enjoys
reliving his childhood with the children he studies. He recently completed
fifth grade in Modena, Italy, but not at the top of his class. This is a big
transition year for Bill as his daughter, Veronica, (the one who is clearly
not Goofy in the photo) is all grown up and off to college at New York
University.
