Jonathan Wynn

Lecturer

Jonathan Wynn holds a PhD in Sociology (City University of New York-Graduate Center), and works at the intersection of urban and cultural sociology. His dissertation project, a theoretically informed ethnographic study of how walking tour guides serve as unconventional culture workers in urban spaces that are marked by ever-increasing homogeneity, commodification, and banalization, is currently a manuscript under review. This research has been published in Qualitative Sociology, Qualitative Inquiry, Radical Society, Contexts Magazine, an edited volume on emotional labor and sociological inquiry, and in an article forthcoming in Cultural Sociology.

Building upon this work he is currently conducting a comparative, multi-method analysis of three music festivals (the Country Music Association Festival in Nashville, the ‘Dunkin Donuts’ Newport Folk Festival, and Austin, Texas’ South by Southwest festival), to examine how city stakeholders have adopted ‘festivalization’ as an urban cultural policy, and the affects of city branding on both locals and visitors, event organizers and participants. Both quantitative and qualitative data collection and analysis of all three sites has been completed with the extraordinary assistance of Smith College Sociology students.

Jon has taught Urban Sociology, Foundations of Social Theory, Introduction to Sociology, and Media and Technology while at Smith.

Phone: 413-585-3678

Office Location: Pierce Hall 205

Office Hours: Tues 1-2:30 (office), Wed 1:00-2:00 (Haymarket Cafe) and by appt.

Email: jwynn@email.smith.edu

.................................................................................................................................................................