Ryan Ashley Caldwell

Ryan Ashley Caldwell, PhD

Faculty - Full-Time
Ryan Ashley Caldwell
Associate Professor of Sociology
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My primary areas of interest are culture and social theory, with an added emphasis on gender, sexuality, and inequality given my extensive training in women’s studies. I am currently researching how gender and sexuality are understood within social organizations and groups, and how these concepts become defined and socially constructed. My areas of current research include prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib and other areas in Iraq, gender and the military, terrorism in general, and analysis of cultural images. At all levels, I apply social theoretical concepts to empirical data in order to understand social behavior and provide an analysis of social and cultural phenomena. Future areas of scholarship and research will reflect these interests but are not limited by them. My interdisciplinary training allows me to develop a research plan and a teaching strategy that has cross-discipline applications, such that understandings of conceptual canopies are far-reaching for students and within publications. As an added bonus, I am an applied ethicist with an extensive background in philosophy, and especially social epistemology and power analysis.

  • BA, Austin College, Sherman Texas (Liberal Arts, concentration in Philosophy)
  • MA, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX (Philosophy)
  • PhD, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX (Sociology)
  • Women's Studies Certificate, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX
  • Introduction to Sociology
  • Social Problems
  • Women’s Studies in a Transnational and Globalized World
  • The Philosophy of Feminism
  • Applied Ethics
  • Introduction to Philosophy
  • Social Theory (Classical, Contemporary and Postmodern)
  • Modes of Inquiry
  • Independent Study: Feminist Research Methods
  • Social Theory (Classical, Contemporary, Postmodern, Feminist, Cultural)
  • Cultural Studies, Power relations, and social inequality
  • Women's Studies (sex, gender, sexuality, feminism, human rights)
  • Caldwell, Ryan Ashley. “The Keys for Locks: Border Queers/Queer Borders or Community and Possibility for Identity,” Ed. B. Garrick Harden, Rowman & Littlefield/Lexington Publishing, 2019 (forthcoming).
  • Caldwell, Ryan, and Kristi M. Wilson. “Trans-identity: Theory, Politics, and Identity Across the Pacific Basin.” In The Pacific Basin: An Introduction, edited by Shane J. Barter and Michael Weiner, 177-85. New York: Routledge, 2017.
  • “The Role of Gender in “Expressive” Abuse at Abu Ghraib, Cultural Sociology”, Sage, 2008
  • “Torture, What is it Good For? Absolutely Nothing! An analysis of the Response to Abuse at Abu Ghraib”, Theory in ActionAmerican Sociological Association Journal, 2008.
  • Analyzing the Role of Gender in Abu Ghraib Courts-Martial Talcott Parsons: Theories, Developments and Applications, 2010
  • The Unicorn is Dead: Postmodernism, Consumption, and the Production of the Self, Co-Opting Culture: Questions of Culture and Power in Sociology and Cultural Studies, 2010
  • Gender Queer Productions and the Bridge of Cultural Legitimacy, Co-Opting Culture: Questions of Culture and Power in Sociology and Cultural Studies, 2010
  • “Leisure Class,” “Suicide,” “Natural Rights,” “Thorstein Veblen,” and “Talcott Parsons”, International Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, 2007
  • 2008-present, Professor, Soka University of America
  • 2007-2008, Instructor, San Jacinto College
  • 2007-2008, Instructor, Houston Community College
  • Women’s Studies Dissertation Fellowship, Texas A&M University, 2006
  • Outstanding Student Evaluations, HCC, 2007
  • American Civil Liberties Union, Joan Glantz Research Fellowship, 1999