Evelyn J. Patterson
Associate Professor of Sociology
Associate Professor of Law
Affiliated Faculty, Centers for Medicine, Health and Society for the Study of Democratic Institutions
Health Policy Associate, Center for Health Policy at Meharry Medical College
Evelyn Patterson is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and the Law School at Vanderbilt University. Dr. Patterson received her a joint PhD in Demography and Criminology from the University of Pennsylvania. She has three primary interests: (1) health and mortality; (2) sociology of race and ethnicity; (3) demography and institutions of social control. Dr. Patterson’s research, which has received awards from the American Sociological Association and the Population Association of America, has appeared in a broad array of journals including Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Demography, Law and Society Review, American Journal of Public Health, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, and International Migration Review. The focus of her current scholarship includes a critical examination of race as it relates to maternal mortality, policing, physical and mental health, and familial incarceration. She is also studying the differential impact of criminal law and enforcement on the demography of marginalized populations.
Selected Publications
Patterson, Evelyn J. 2017. “The Strategies, Complexities, and Realities of Zero Prison Population Growth.” Social Sciences 6(60). http://www.mdpi.com/2076-0760/6/2/60.
Brown, Tony, Mary L. Bell, and Evelyn J. Patterson. 2016. “Imprisoned by and Freed from Empathy: Familial Incarceration and Psychological Distress among African American Men in the National Survey of American Life.” Journal of Health and Social Behavior 57(2): 240-256. * ASA Award for Best Publication in Mental Health, 2018
Patterson, Evelyn J. and Helena Dagadu. 2016. “Fractures in the Color Line: Consequences of Constructions of Race and Ethnicity on Measures of Imprisonment.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 2(1): 10-26.
Patterson, Evelyn J. and Chris Wildeman. 2015. “Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course Revisited:Cumulative Years Lost to Incarceration for Working-Age White and Black Men.” Social Science Research 53: 325-337.
Zuberi, Tukufu, Evelyn J. Patterson, and Quincy T. Stewart. 2015. “Race, Methodology, and Social Construction in the Genomic Era.” The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 661: 86-108.
Patterson, Evelyn J. 2013. “The Dose-Response of Time Served in Prison on Mortality: New York State, 1989-2003.” American Journal of Public Health 103(3): 523-528.
Patterson, Evelyn J. 2010. “Incarcerating Death: Mortality in U.S. State Correctional Facilities, 1985-1998.” Demography 47(3): 587-607. * ASA Award for Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship in Population, 2012