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About Professor Shortell

Professional Info

Associate Professor
Department of Sociology
PSC Faculty Grievance Counselor
Brooklyn College, CUNY

BS, Psychology, Washington State University, 1987
PhD, Social Psychology, Boston College, 1992

My research interests include natural language processing, social semiotics, methods of text analysis, American public discourse, ideology and social class, and, social creativity and forms of knowledge production. I am currently working on a project examining public reaction to Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection from his day to our own.

Some Recent Scholarship

Shortell, T. 2005. African-American Abolitionism as a Human Rights Discourse. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Amherst Branch of the Association for the Study of African-American Life and History. Amherst, MA.

Shortell, T. 2004. The Decline of the Public Sphere: A Semiotic Analysis of the Rhetoric of Race in New York City. Pp 159-177 in Race and Ethnicity in New York City. Research in Urban Sociology, Volume Seven, edited by Jerome Krase and Ray Hutchinson. New York: Elsevier.

Shortell, T. 2004. Seeing the City: Using the Community Profile to Teach Urban Sociology. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. San Francisco, CA.

Shortell, T. 2004. The Rhetoric of Black Abolitionism: an Exploratory Analysis Of Anti-Slavery Newspapers In New York State. Social Science History. 28(1):75-109.

Shortell, T. 2004. From Innovation To Common Practice: How Faculty Networks Are Spreading New Practices at Brooklyn College. Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. Washington, DC.

Shortell, T. 2004. "Religion and Morality: A Contradiction Explained" in Axis of Evil: Perforated Praeter Naturam. Chicago, Qualiatica Press.

Shortell, T. 2002. Collective Identity Construction in Black Abolitionist Discourse: A Conceptual Network Analysis of the New York Anti-Slavery Press. Paper presented at the Race/Ethnicity Network session, Annual Meeting of the Social Science History Association. St Louis, MO.

Shortell, T. 2001. Radicalization of Religious Discourse In El Salvador: The Case of Archbishop Oscar A. Romero. Sociology of Religion 62(1):87-103.