Samantha Kwan

Assistant Professor

• Phone: (713)743-3948
• Email:sskwan@uh.edu
• Office: 482 Philip G. Hoffman Hall

Samantha Kwan, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and a Women’s Studies faculty affiliate at the University of Houston. She received her doctorate in sociology from the University of Arizona in 2007. Professor Kwan conducts qualitative research in the areas of gender, body, health, and culture, focusing on how cultural and social structures shape women’s physical and emotional well-being. Her recent work examines contested meanings about the fat body, Evangelical Christian weight loss programs, cosmetic surgery, and organizational image norms.

Education

• Ph.D., University of Arizona, 2007
• M.A., Carleton University, 1998
• B.A., University of Toronto, 1995

Selected Publications

• Kwan, Samantha. Forthcoming. “Competing Motivational Discourses for Weight Loss: Means to Ends and the Nexus of Beauty and Health.” Qualitative Health Research.


• Kwan, Samantha. Forthcoming. “Individual versus Corporate Responsibility: Market Choice, the Food Industry, and the Pervasiveness of Moral Models of Fatness.” Food, Culture & Society


• Kwan, Samantha. 2009. “Framing the Fat Body: Contested Meanings between Government, Activists, and Industry.” Sociological Inquiry 79(1): 25-50.


• Kwan, Samantha and Mary Nell Trautner. 2009. “Beauty Work: Individual and Institutional Rewards, the Reproduction of Gender, and Questions of Agency.” Sociology Compass 3(1): 49-71.

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Research Interests

• Gender
• Body and Health
• Food, Culture, and Consumption

 

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Teaching

• Introduction to Sociological Research
• Honors Introduction to Sociology
• Sociology of Gender
• Sociology of Body
• Criminology

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Affiliations

• American Sociological Association (ASA)
• Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS)
• National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA)

Department of Sociology | Office: 450 Philip Hoffman Hall | (713) 743-3940 | (713) 743-3943 fax