About

Elizabeth A. Armstrong is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan, with a Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, obtained in 1998. Her research focuses on gender and sexuality, family, life course, and society, inequalities and stratification, politics and social change, qualitative approaches, sociology of culture, and theory, knowledge, and science. She has contributed to the understanding of social movements and identity formation, particularly through her work on the evolution of gay life and organizations in San Francisco from the 1950s to the mid-1990s, as well as examining issues related to higher education and inequality, exemplified by her book 'Paying for the Party,' which discusses how college maintains inequality. Her scholarly work includes exploring how social identities are organized and how societal structures influence individual life courses and social change.

Research topics

• Sociology
• Political Science
• Psychology
• Computer Science
• Law
• Medicine
• Computer Security
• Internet privacy
• Social psychology
• Engineering
• Criminology
• Public relations
• Medical emergency

Selected publications

• Preventing Campus Sexual Assault: Institutional Variation in Prevention Programming Across U.S. Colleges and Universities

  Educational Evaluation and Policy Analysis · 2025-09-20

  article

  The 2013 Campus SaVE Act recommends that American universities provide ongoing sexual assault prevention programming. Based on a representative sample of 381 four-year colleges and universities, we investigate institutional variation in compliance with the Campus SaVE Act’s prevention recommendations. We use theories of organizational responsiveness to legal regulation and hypothesize that coercion, capacity, and commitment shape programming. We find prevention education more likely in schools with fewer Pell grant recipients, higher tuition, and more tenure-track women faculty. Private schools, particularly Christian colleges and Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), were significantly less likely to provide prevention education than public institutions. These findings suggest an underrecognized type of educational inequality—variation in sexual assault prevention programming by institution attended.

  PublisherDOI

• “It’s Complicated”: How Black and White Women Innovate with Situationships at Midlife

  Social Problems · 2024-04-11 · 6 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Abstract The sexual and romantic activities of unmarried women at midlife are often invisible in survey research based on normative categories of adult intimacy. However, women at this stage in the life course are structurally positioned to innovate with intimacy. In our interviews with 53 Black and white women between ages 33-58, outside of stable partnerships, and open to sex and intimacy with men, we find that women’s frustration with marriage and marriage-like commitment, negative experiences dating, and lack of interest in celibacy led them to experiment with a new form of intimacy. A majority engaged in ongoing liaisons in a liminal space between casual and committed—what emerging scholarship on the romantic relationships of Black women refer to as “situationships.” Black women, those with higher incomes, and queer-identified women were more likely to use situationships. We argue that women’s use of situationships challenged normative expectations that felt constraining to many at midlife and allowed women to enjoy the benefits of sexual and romantic company. Situationships enabled them to avoid casual sex and maintain autonomy and single identity. Finally, we highlight the disadvantages of situationships, emphasizing the importance of life stage and orientation to normative arrangements for situationship experiences.

  PublisherDOI

• Litigation politics: social movement activity in campus sexual assault litigation

  Law & Society Review · 2024-09-01

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Abstract Critics point to increasing private lawsuits filed by students accused of campus sexual assault as evidence that Obama-era Title IX guidance overcorrected and favored victims at the expense of the due process rights of the accused. This overcorrection narrative powerfully reshaped the debate surrounding campus sexual assault and ultimately contributed to the rescinding of the guidance. Existing analytical tools from legal mobilization scholarship – emphasizing the deployment of litigation by social movement actors – are not equipped to identify the origins and dissemination of this political narrative. Drawing from legal complaints, media coverage and interviews with lawyers, we show how private practice attorneys with no visible movement ties helped craft the overcorrection narrative from individual lawsuits by (1) embedding political claims in legal filings, (2) amplifying the narrative in media and (3) collaborating with advocates in quantifying the litigation trend. We extend prior scholarship and illustrate how lawsuits can be both a vehicle of political storytelling and the story itself. We further argue that the ideology of liberal legalism can mask the politics of private lawsuits, making litigation a useful tool for social movement efforts to mobilize support for legal reform.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Racialized Horizontal Stratification in US Higher Education: Politics, Process, and Consequences

  Annual Review of Sociology · 2024-05-01 · 19 citations

  articleOpen access

  In this review, we integrate three bodies of scholarship—education stratification research, political-historical sociology of higher education, and sociological theories of race and racism—to understand the production of “separate and unequal” postsecondary experiences for racially marginalized college students in the United States. We argue that the US postsecondary system is plural, heterogeneous, and stratified partly as a result of hundreds of years of contested efforts to deploy higher education in the service of white supremacy and capital accumulation. Organizational stratification of higher education along racial lines leads to horizontal stratification in individual experiences within the same level of schooling, and even within the same university. We review literature on racialized sorting between schools, which channels racially marginalized students to different parts of the postsecondary system relative to their racially advantaged peers. We also describe stratification within schools, as students are tracked, often by race, into divergent academic and social pathways internal to a single university. Both types of sorting have racial consequences for students’ career trajectories, economic security, and well-being. Finally, we detail recent efforts to challenge horizontal stratification, responses to those efforts, and avenues for future research.

  PublisherDOI

• Benchmarking Report – Assessment of Teaching and Learning Quality

  Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 2023-08-08

  reportOpen access

  According to the aim planned for Work Package 2, Task 2.3.1, concerning the benchmark of<br> University partners of UNITA Alliance (hereinafter referred as “partners”) on “National<br> practices of Quality Assurance (QA) of Teaching and Learning (T&amp;L), with particular focus on<br> Students’ evaluation of T&amp;L” all activities have been implemented according to the following<br> steps:<br> - collection by UNITO (WP 2.3 working group) of QA documents from partners<br> - analysis of documents by UNITO<br> - formulation of ad hoc questions to be discussed with partners<br> - question time: online meeting with each partner<br> - summary of the data<br> - drafting of the benchmarking report by UNITO<br> The Benchmarking Report includes the main references to European Standards and Guidelines<br> (ESG 2015) for Quality Assurance in Higher Education, with particular emphasis on Teaching and<br> Learning, and an insight on students’ and teachers’ surveys on Teaching and Learning quality.<br> The latter can be considered as propaedeutic for the implementation of Task 2.3.2 actions,<br> namely to set questionnaires for students’ and teachers evaluation of teaching and learning<br> within the UNITA framework.<br> The Annexes to the present Report summarize the main benchmarking data, collected within<br> partners, concerning QA principles, processes and actors, and students’ and teachers’ surveys.<br> The present draft (1.0) will be shared among partners to allow correction and/or integration.<br> Updated versions of the document will be shared among partners.

  PublisherDOI

• Title IX, Campus Sexual Misconduct, and the Criminalization of a US Civil Rights Law

  American Journal of Sociology · 2023-11-01 · 1 citations

  article
  PublisherDOI

• How Many Terms Does It Take to Define Sexual Assault? Inconsistencies in U.S. Higher Education Sexual Misconduct Policies

  Violence Against Women · 2023 · 5 citations

  • Computer Security
  • Political Science
  • Computer Science

  Campus sexual misconduct policies (SMPs) outline prohibited conduct. We sought to document the range of terms used to refer to forms of nonconsensual sexual contact in SMPs and to analyze the content of definitions provided for the term "sexual assault." We coded the 2016-2017 SMPs from a sample of 381 U.S. schools. We identified 125 unique terms and documented both a terminological and conceptual morass around sexual assault. Policy language may have implications for students' and administrators' evaluation of experiences and reports of sexual assault.

  PublisherDOI

• "How is a Student to Know Who They Can Talk To?": University Website Communication about Sexual Assault in the Context of Compelled Disclosure

  Review of higher education/˜The œreview of higher education · 2023 · 4 citations

  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Public relations

  Compelled disclosure policies require many U.S. higher education employees to report all disclosures of sexual violence. These federally mandated policies make it important that student-survivors understand the implications of disclosures. We analyzed how university websites communicated information about compelled disclosure to students in 2017 and 2022, finding that websites 1) often lacked information about compelled disclosure policies, 2) discussed confidentiality in inaccurate or confusing ways, and 3) did not clearly indicate when access to resources was contingent upon reporting. In both university policy and website design, administrators should recognize that web communication about reporting and available resources may facilitate and/ or impede a survivor's ability to make agentic choices. Administrators should seek to design websites that prioritize survivor agency and control. Because a survivor's path to healing may not involve formal reporting, this means that transparent communication about compelled disclosure policies and visible access to confidential resources are key.

  PublisherDOI

• Organizations and Movements

  The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements · 2022-09-27 · 6 citations

  other1st authorCorresponding

  Social movements organize people, resources, and ideas for social change. Many do this through formal organizations – often called social movement organizations (SMOs). The concept of a social movement organization is trickier than it may initially seem, since it depends on defining a “social movement” and specifying its relevant set of organizations. Though scholars have defined social movements in a variety of ways, this entry draws on Snow's work to provisionally define social movements as collectivities seeking social change at least partly outside of institutionalized politics. Similarly, though various definitions of organizations have been offered, the entry views organizations as goal‐directed, boundary‐maintaining groups, typically with some degree of formal structure.

  PublisherDOI

• Stonewall Riots (United States)

  The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements · 2022-09-27

  other1st authorCorresponding

  Around 1:20 a.m. on Saturday 28 June 1969, police raided the Stonewall Inn, a homosexual bar on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village in New York City. Customers included homeless teens, drag queens, and others unwelcome elsewhere. Patrons initiated a riot that lasted into the night and resumed the next day. The Stonewall riots are often viewed as the spark of the gay liberation movement. This is not historically accurate: gay liberation was already well underway. The riots were not the first time gays fought back against police, nor were they the first raid to generate political organizing. The Stonewall riots are of interest because of their symbolic importance to gay movements in the US and around the globe. The processes through which the riots acquired this salience provide insight into the creation of collective memory within social movements.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Laura T. Hamilton

  University of California, Merced

  14 shared

• Sandra R. Levitsky

  4 shared

• Katelyn Kennon

  3 shared

• Kamaria B. Porter

  3 shared

• Richard Arum

  2 shared

• Laura S. Hamilton

  2 shared

• Paula England

  2 shared

• Mitchell L. Stevens

  Stanford University

  2 shared