DIRECTORY LISTING
Biography
Professor Christopher Bonastia
I joined the Sociology Department at Lehman College in 2004, after spending one year as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Queens College and two years as a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research at the University of California, Berkeley. I was Associate Director of Honors Programs (Macaulay Honors College and Lehman Scholars Program) from 2009 to Fall 2020, and was the Sociology major advisor from 2007 to Fall 2020, when I began to serve a three-year terms as chair of the department.
While at Lehman, I have taught four Sociology courses: SOC 309 (Social Inequality), SOC 327 (American Social Policy Making), SOC 338 (Race & Ethnicity), and a course entitled Beyond the Icons: Local Activism and Resistance in the Struggle for Racial Equality. I have also taught courses at the CUNY Graduate Center and in the Honors Programs at Lehman, including a course on creativity and originality in modern music.
My research focuses on the politics of racial inequality. I have published three books: Knocking on the Door: The Federal Government’s Attempt to Desegregate the Suburbs (Princeton University Press, 2006); Southern Stalemate: Five Years without Public Education in Prince Edward County, Virginia (University of Chicago Press, 2012); and The Battle Nearer to Home: The Persistence of School Segregation in New York City (Stanford University Press,, 2022). My work has also reached non-academic audiences with published essays in the Gotham Gazette, Slate and the Huffington Post, and an appearance on the Talk Out of School podcast.