Research Interests

• Critical Race Theory
• Race and Ethnicity
• Sociology of Law
• Race, Class and Gender
• Ethnographic Methods

Courses Taught at Texas A&M

• SOCI 205: Introduction to Sociology
• SOCI 317: Racial and Ethnic Relations
• SOCI 667: Seminar Race: Critical Race Theory
• SOCI 667: Seminar Race: Race and Social Science Methods

Bio

Dr. Wendy Leo Moore is a sociologist and lawyer whose work focuses on the provocative intersections of race, law, and legal institutions. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Minnesota (2005) and her J.D. from the University of Minnesota Law School (2000), and she is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Texas A&M University. Her award winning book Reproducing Racism; White Space, Elite Law Schools and Racial Inequality (2008), analyzed the racial dynamics in elite U.S. law schools using a critical race theory lens and in this book Dr. Moore created a cutting edge a theory of white institutional space. Though Dr. Moore first explicated her theory of white institutional space in Reproducing Racism, she has since published a wide range of research that articulates the racialized mechanisms in other organizational contexts that create and perpetuate white space.

Dr. Moore’s current research focuses on how color-blind abstract laws of the post-Civil Rights era continue to facilitate racial hierarchy and white supremacy. She has published widely on the First Amendment and racist speech and on U.S. Supreme Court race jurisprudence. Dr. Moore is currently working on her second book, tentatively entitled The Legal Alchemy of White Domination, which examines how the United States Supreme Court deploys a structurally decontextualized white racial logic that discursively signals commitment to racial equality under the law, but functionally stalls progress toward racial equity, thereby providing continuous legal support for white domination. Dr. Moore is a previous Chair of the American Sociological Association (ASA) Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities and she has served on the ASA Council, ASA Executive Committee, and the ASA-SREM publications committee.

Representative Publications

• Reproducing Racism; White Space, Elite Law Schools and Racial Inequality. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield.

Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award Honorable Mention Winner, 2010. Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities, American Sociological Association. 

•  Moore, Wendy Leo. 2014. “The Legal Alchemy of White Domination: Embedding White Logic in Equal Protection Law.” Humanity and Society. Vol. 38 No 1: 7-24.
• Evans, Louwanda* and Wendy Leo Moore. 2015. “Impossible Burdens: White Institutions, Emotional Labor, and Micro-Resistance.” Social Problems. Vol. 62 No. 3: 439-454.

Oliver Cromwell Cox Article Award, 2017. Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities, American Sociological Association.

•  Moore, Wendy Leo and Joyce M. Bell. 2017. ““The Right to be Racist on Campus; Racist Speech, White Institutional Space, and the First Amendment.” Law & Policy. Vol. 39 No. 2: 99-120.
• Bracey, Glenn II and Wendy Leo Moore. 2017. ““Race Tests”: Racial Boundary Maintenance in White Evangelical Churches,” Sociological Inquiry. Vol.87 No. 2: 282-302
• Moore, Wendy Leo. 2020. “Mechanisms of White Space,” American Behavioral Scientist. Vol. 64 No. 19: 1946-1960.