Cassi L. Pittman, a native of Cleveland, OH. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology and Social Policy at Harvard University in 2012 and her B.A. in Sociology and Urban Studies from the University of Pennsylvania in 2005. After completing a post-doctoral fellowship in the Department of Sociology at the Ohio State University, she will begin in the fall of 2014 as an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Case Western Reserve University, returning to the city where she was born and raised.
Professor Pittman’s work focuses on how racial minorities, particularly blacks, manage contemporary forms of racism with the goal of uncovering how contemporary processes of social exclusion and inequality function to disadvantage racial minorities. Drawing on qualitative methods, her scholarship addresses core disciplinary questions concerning the significance of race and racial inequality, while also raising new questions pertaining to the intersectionality of race and class and racial minorities’ consumption and economic behavior. Presently her research focuses on the attitudes, experiences, and consumption preferences of the black middle-class.