Mary Pattillo Named Harold Washington Professor

The author is a founding board member of Urban Prep Charter Academies

Pattillo's areas of research interest include race and ethnicity -- with an emphasis on class stratification -- urban sociology and qualitative methods. She is considered the foremost authority on the black middle class.

Her first book, "Black Picket Fences: Privilege and Peril among the Black Middle Class" (1999), won the Oliver Cromwell Cox Best Book Award from the American Sociological Association. She also is co-editor of "Imprisoning America: The Social Effects of Mass Incarceration" (2004). Her most recent book, "Black on the Block: The Politics of Race and Class in the City" (2007), examines conflict and consensus as one African-American neighborhood deals with gentrification and the transformation of public housing.

Pattillo has published articles in several journals including the American Sociological Review, Social Forces and Ethnic and Racial Studies and has been an invited speaker at numerous conferences. She is a founding board member of Urban Prep Charter Academies, which sponsors Chicago's only all-boys public high schools in several neighborhoods.

Pattillo joined the Northwestern faculty in 1998.