Corey Fields

At CASBS, Corey Fields will be working on a book manuscript that explores recent discourse in the US around issues of public health and racial inequality. The project draws on two data sources to examine the reckoning with these issues in 2020. The American Voices Project (AVP) relies on immersive interviews with a nationally representative sample to deliver a comprehensive portrait of life across the country. The other source of data for this project draws on a content analysis of public statements from Fortune 500 companies, US News and World Report’s top 100 universities, and Forbes’ top 100 nonprofits. The book will explore how American individuals and organizations experienced the COVID pandemic and engagement with issues of racial inequality. The book aims to provide insight into similarities and differences in how individual Americans and elite American organizations were talking about both issues, while also exploring the mechanisms that link individual and organizational responses.

Fields is an associate professor and the Idol Family Chair in the Department of Sociology at Georgetown University. His research explores the role of identity in structuring social life, and contributes to the ongoing analysis of the relationship between identity, experience, and culture. His work draws on a cultural perspective – across a range of methodological approaches – that emphasizes the role of meaning and recognizes that identities are enacted in specific social contexts. He is the author of Black Elephants in the Room: The Unexpected Politics of African American Republicans(University of California Press, 2016). The book uses the experiences of African-American Republicans to explore the dynamic relationship between race and political behavior in contemporary U.S. politics.