Verta Taylor

Verta Taylor is a sociologist whose research focuses on gender,
sexualities, and social movements. She has published award winning
books and articles on a wide range of topics, including women’s,
LGBTQ, and self-help movements; postpartum depression; drag
queen identities and performances; same-sex marriage; and queer
identities. Her research has made influential contributions to
understanding the role of gender, collective identity, emotions, and
social movement culture in social protest and collective action.
Taylor’s theory of social movement abeyance, based on research on
the US women’s movement, has been used widely by scholars to
understand how other activist networks, including rightwing extremists,
adapt and manage to hold on during hostile political contexts only to
reemerge as mass movements when the political and cultural context
shifts.

Taylor’s work has been supported by grants from the National Science
Foundation, the National Institute of Mental Health, the National
Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Psychological
Association Foundation, among others. Taylor was the 2011 recipient
of the American Sociological Association’s Jessie Bernard Award, and
in 2008, she received the John D. McCarthy Lifetime Achievement
Award in Social Movements and the American Sociological
Association’s Simon and Gagnon Award for the Lifetime of Scholarly
Contributions to the Study of Sexuality. She recently completed the
11th edition of her pioneering co-edited gender studies text, Feminist
Frontiers.