Dr. Mary J. Gallant OF EXCELLENCE

Dr. Mary J. Gallant has been an associate professor of sociology at Rowan University since 1992. Her area of specialization in her teaching is classical social theory, a course in the core of the sociology major throughout her tenure at Rowan along with Senior Seminars in Sociology and College of Humanity and Social Sciences (CHSS). Her research for her dissertation focused on the network structures of students in medical school and how it had the potential to strongly support socialization to the medical profession. Interested in destructive contexts and the self, her next major research was on the Holocaust and surviving extremity, 1933-1945, in hiding, rescue, resistance, the ghettos and concentration camps of WWII and the Holocaust. From 2007-2012, she served as chair of the Sociology Department and then continued as chair of the combined Sociology and Anthropology Department from 2013-2015. Dr. Gallant earned her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Minnesota in 1985.

How did you get started in your field/industry?

My mentor at the University of Missouri was Dr. Robert W. Habenstein. He was associated with the sociology of the family and qualitative sociology. My undergraduate work led on to a master’s degree sponsored by a Killam fellowship in the area of family, kinship, and community in the North Atlantic. His own training at the University of Chicago connected me to his colleague, Dr. Gregory Prentiss Stone and, after Dr. Stone’s death, Dr. Joseph J. Galaskiewicz became my dissertation advisor. What are some of the biggest challenges/obstacles you faced in your career?

Throughout my career I have been aware that women in academia are up against a different pattern of irrationalities than men are in handling various forms of institutional discrimination and how this affects interaction important to success. Doing research on this in several articles I presented and published helped me gain insight into how as a society and interpersonally we deal with systemic inequality. Gender scripts that guide our lives in many areas still need to be fine-tuned to make career paths smoother. In the worst of times, finding surprising alliances were as important as self-discipline and critical self-examination in gaining the higher ground I sought.

Name one outstanding quality that you think people should know about you.

Optimism. Miracles happen. Help them materialize. academics.rowan.edu/chss/departments/sociology/facultystaff/marygallant.html

The Holocaust was a turning point in the lives of millions of European Jews, and, Post-WWII and beyond, it vitalized new research on trauma, human rights research and international law, war crimes trials after WWII, the IMT (London) and NMT (Nuremberg and Tokyo), as well as social policy and politics surrounding genocide intervention. Presently Dr. Gallant is working on a book chapter on WWII, collective memory and the Holocaust influencing military ethics and education. She published her first book in this area, “Coming of Age in the Holocaust: The Last Survivors Remember” (2002) and is preparing a new edition of this work. Her journal articles and book chapters associated with the study of the Holocaust at international conferences in Germany and Britain focused on rescue and resistance. In each of these works she is highlighting interaction strategies and self-processes associated with surviving destruction of the self during extremity.

Dr. Gallant’s second area of research is related to the professions using social network analysis. This research emphasis emerged out of her dissertation on medical school socialization. In 2013, she published a second book, “Friendship Networks in Medical School: A Network Analytic Approach to the Study of Social Solidarity” at the invitation of a German publisher specializing in dissertation research. She is working on publishing an article on the role of informal relationships and social support and medical student success.