Annette Nierobisz

Education & Professional History

Queen's University, MA; University of Toronto, PhD

Annette Nierobisz, Professor of Sociology, joined Carleton College in 2000. She teaches a variety of courses, from Introduction to Sociology and Growing Up in an Aging Society to Working in the 21^st Century and Sociology of Mass Incarceration. She enjoys helping students discover their sociological imagination, refine their methodological techniques, and embark on their own investigations of the social world.

Professor Nierobisz’s publications have examined a broad range of topics, from fear of crime among women who encounter sexual harassment in public spaces to the role played by the Canadian Human Rights Commission in the 2005 legalization of same-sex marriage in Canada. In her recently published book, American Idle: Late-Career Job Loss in a Neoliberal Era (Rutgers University Press 2025), Professor Nierobisz and fellow sociologist Dana Sawchuk of Wilfrid Laurier University investigate how a select group of older workers interpret their experience of losing a job in the aftermath of the 2008 Great Recession. The books builds on Professor Nierobisz’s long standing interest in workplace issues and previously published research on job loss in economic recessions, while also drawing on her expertise in qualitative data analysis.

American Idle: Job Loss Among Aging Americans

American Idle: Late-Career Job Loss in a Neoliberal Era reports the findings from interviews with sixty-two mostly white-collar workers who experienced late-career job loss in the wake of the Great Recession. Without the benefits of planned retirement or time horizons favorable to recouping their losses, these employees experience an array of outcomes, from hard falls to soft landings. Notably, when reflecting on the effects of job loss, fruitless job searches, and the overall experience of unemployment, participants in this study regularly called on the frameworks instilled by neoliberalism. Invoking neoliberal rhetoric, these older Americans deferred to businesses’ need to prioritize bottom lines, accepted the shift toward precarious employment, or highlighted the importance of taking initiative and maintaining a positive mindset in the face of structural obstacles. Even so, participants also recognized the incompatibility between neoliberalism’s “one-size-fits-all” solutions and their own situations; this disconnect led them to consider their experiences through competing frameworks and to voice resistance to aspects of neoliberal capitalism. Employing a life course sociology perspective to explore older workers’ precarity in an age of rising economic insecurity, American Idle sheds light on a new wrinkle in American aging.

Previous Courses

Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton College

Introductory courses
• Introduction to Sociology; Sociology of COVID-19 (A&I Seminar); Working Across Our Lives (A&I Seminar)

Required SOAN courses
• Methods of Social Research; Sociological Thought and Theory

Aging and the Life Course
• Growing Up in an Aging Society

Law, Crime, and Deviance
• Law and Society; Girls Gone Bad: Women, Crime and Criminal Justice; Myths of Crime; Criminology; Contemporary Issues in Critical Criminology; X = Crime; Sociology of Mass Incarceration;

Work and Occupations
• Work and Occupations in Contemporary Society; Working in the New Economy; Critical Perspectives on Work in the 21st Century

Department of Sociology and Anthropology, St. Olaf College

Work and Career in Modern Society, Law and Society, Introduction to Sociology

Teaching and Research Experience

Director, Reimaging Society: Capitalism, Socialism, & the Environment, Summer Liberal Arts Institute, Carleton College, 2024

Director, Global Pandemics Program, Summer Liberal Arts Institute, Carleton College, 2020-2022

Director, Summer Quantitative Reasoning Institute, Carleton College, 2019
Broom Fellow for Public Scholarship, 2016-2019
Professor of Sociology, Carleton College, 2014-
Chair, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Carleton College, 2011-2016
Associate Professor of Sociology, Carleton College, 2007-2017
Posse Mentor, Posse Foundation (Chicago) and Carleton College, 2008-2012
Senior Researcher, Research and Statistical Analysis Division, Canadian Human Rights Commission, 2006-2008
Visiting Scholar, Center for the Study of Law and Society, University of California, Berkeley, 2003
Assistant Professor of Sociology, Carleton College, 2000-2007
Visiting Lecturer, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, St. Olaf College, 1999-2000

Publications

Book

Annette Nierobisz and Dana Sawchuk. 2025. American Idle: Late Career Job Loss in a Neoliberal Era. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.

Journal Articles

Annette Nierobisz and Dana Sawchuk. 2018. “Religious Coping and Older, Unemployed Workers: Narratives of the Job Loss Experience.” Journal of Religion, Spirituality and Aging 30(4): 325-353.

Charles Seguin, Annette Nierobisz and Karen Phelan Kozlowski. 2017. “Seeing Race: Teaching Racial Segregation with the Racial Dot Map.” Teaching Sociology 45: 142-151.

Annette Nierobisz. 2010. “Wrestling with the New Economy: Judicial Rhetoric in Canadian Wrongful Dismissal Claims.” Law and Social Inquiry 35: 403-449.

Annette Nierobisz, Mark Searl and Charles Théroux. 2008. “Human Rights Commissions and Public Policy: The Role of the Canadian Human Rights Commission in Advancing Sexual Orientation Equality Rights in Canada.” Canadian Public Administration Journal 51: 239-263.

Annette Nierobisz and John Hagan. 2005. “Shooting the Messenger and the Message: The Social Basis of Authority Challenges in Canadian Law School Settings.” Advances in Gender Research 9: 239-267.

Sandy Welsh, Myrna Dawson and Annette Nierobisz. 2002. “Legal Factors, Extra-Legal Factors, or Changes in the Law? Using Criminal Justice Research to Understand the Resolution of Sexual Harassment Complaints.” Social Problems 48: 605-623.

Ross Macmillan, Annette Nierobisz, and Sandy Welsh. 2000. “Experiencing the Streets: Harassment and Perceptions of Safety Among Women.” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 37: 306-322.

Sandy Welsh and Annette Nierobisz. 1997. “How Prevalent is Sexual Harassment? A Research Note on Measuring Sexual Harassment in Canada.” Canadian Journal of Sociology 22: 505-522.

Reviews and Short Pieces

“Eleanor Roosevelt, It’s Up to the Women,” in Every Book, a Tale: Selections from Special Collections in the Laurence McKinley Gould Library of Carleton College. Pp. 88-89 in John Roger Paas, ed. Northfield, MN: Trustees of Carleton College, 2010.

When Crime Waves, by Vincent F. Sacco. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Reviewed by Annette Nierobisz for International Review of Modern Sociology, vol. 32, no.1, pp 155-156, Spring 2006.

Urban Lawyers: The New Social Structure of the Bar, by John P. Heinz, Robert L. Nelson, Rebecca L. Sandefur, and Edward O. Laumann. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Reviewed by Annette Nierobisz for Law and Society Review, vol. 40, no. 3, pp. 738-740, September 2006.

Teaching Materials

Annette Nierobisz. 2008. “The Myths of Crime, Course Assignments.” In the American Sociological Association’s Teaching Criminology: A Collection of Syllabi, Assignments, and Other Resources and Issues. Edited by Tim Brezina.

Erik Larson and Annette Nierobisz. 2006. “Advising Undergraduate Students about Law School.” Amici: The American Sociological Association Sociology of Law Section Newsletter, Vol. 13 (Fall): 5-8.

Annette Nierobisz. 2004. “Work and Occupations: Contemporary Society. Course Syllabus and Introductory Assignment.” In the American Sociological Association’s The Sociology of Work and Occupations: Syllabi and Other Instructional Materials, 5th Edition. Edited by Carol Auster.

Research Reports

Annette Nierobisz and Charles Théroux. 2009. Disability Complaints Submitted to the Canadian Human Rights Commission: An Analysis of Systemic Barriers Reported by Complainants. Canadian Human Rights Commission, Ottawa, Ontario.

Sandy Welsh and Annette Nierobisz. 1997. Sexual Harassment Complaints and the Canadian Human Rights Commission, 1978-1995. Canadian Human Rights Commission, Ottawa, Ontario.

Sandy Welsh and Annette Nierobisz. 1996. Complaints to the Canadian Human Rights Commission: A Preliminary Report. Canadian Human Rights Commission, Ottawa, Ontario.