William Hoynes
William Hoynes is Professor of Sociology on the Jane Baker Nord ’42 Chair in Media Studies. Professor Hoynes served as Vassar’s Dean of the Faculty from 2019 to 2024. During his time as Dean, Hoynes hired more than 50 new tenure-track faculty members, served as co-principal investigator on several major institutional grants, and co-chaired the college’s pandemic response committee VassarTogether. Prior to his term as Dean, Hoynes served as Chair of the Sociology Department and Director of both the American Studies Program and the Media Studies Program. He received his PhD in Sociology from Boston College and joined Vassar’s Sociology Department in 1992. Professor Hoynes is a cultural sociologist whose research explores contemporary media and culture in the United States, with a special focus on professional journalism, the structure of the media industry, consumer culture, and practices of democratic citizenship.
Research and Academic Interests
Media and Society
Sociology of Culture
Social Theory
Youth Sports
Departments and Programs
Courses
AMST 313 Multidisciplinary Research Methods
MEDS 385 Media and War
SOCI 256 Mass Media and Society
SOCI 265 News Media in the U.S.
SOCI 365 Class, Culture, and Power
Selected Publications
Professor Hoynes is the author or co-author of many books and articles, including the following:
- A forthcoming (2025) book, co-authored with Chris Bjork, Vassar Professor of Education: More Than Just a Game: How the Youth Sports Industry Is Changing the Way We Parent and What to Do About It .
Recent Scholarly Articles
- Christopher Bjork and William Hoynes. Parents Find Community: Youth Sports as a Mobile Neighborhood. Sport in Society, 2021.
- Carlos Alamo-Pastrana and William Hoynes. Racialization of News: Constructing and Challenging Professional Journalism as "White Media". Humanity & Society. 44 (1): 67-91, 2020.
- Peggy Kahn, William Hoynes, and Jonathan Bix. Organizers and Academics Together: The Household Energy Security Crisis and Utility Justice Organizing. In S.D. Greenbaum, G. Jacobs, and P. Zinn, Collaborating for Change: A Participatory Action Research Casebook (pp. 47-62). New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2020.
Books
- Public Television for Sale (Westview Press, 1994; Routledge 2019), which was awarded the 1995 Goldsmith Book Prize from the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.
- Experience Sociology (with David Croteau and Tara Stamm, McGraw-Hill, fifth edition, 2024).
- Media/Society (with David Croteau and Clayton Childress, Sage Publications, seventh edition, 2022), which was awarded the McGuffey Longevity Award from the Textbook & Academic Authors Association in 2022.
- The Business of Media: Corporate Media and the Public Interest (with David Croteau, Sage, second edition, 2006), which was awarded the Robert Picard Book Award from the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication.
- Rhyming Hope and History: Activists, Academics, and Social Movement Scholarship (with David Croteau and Charlotte Ryan, University of Minnesota Press, 2006).
- The Political Diversity of Public Television: Polysemy, the Public Sphere, and the Conservative Critique of PBS. (with David Croteau and Kevin Carragee, Journalism and Mass Communication Monographs 157, 1996).
- By Invitation Only: How the Media Limit Political Debate (with David Croteau, Common Courage Press, 1994).
In the Media
Photos
Download images for non-commercial use, photo credit required.
