Karen A. Cerulo

Karen A. Cerulo
Born	1957 Perth Amboy, New Jersey

Karen A. Cerulo (born January 25, 1957 in Perth Amboy, New Jersey) is an American sociologist specializing in the study of culture, communication and cognition. Currently, she is a Professor of Sociology at Rutgers University and the editor of Sociological Forum, the flagship journal of the Eastern Sociological Society. From 2009 to 2010, she served as the Chair of the American Sociological Association’s Culture section, and since 1999, she has directed the section’s Culture and Cognition Network. Her book Identity Designs: The Sights and Sounds of a Nation won the section’s award for the best book of 1996. Cerulo is a former Vice President of the Eastern Sociological Society. In 2013, she was named the Robin M. Williams Jr. Lecturer by the Eastern Sociological Society; she won that organization’s Merit Award in the same year.

Cerulo earned her B.A. from Rutgers University, graduating summa cum laude in 1980. She received her M.A. (1983) and Ph.D. (1985) in sociology from Princeton University. Her dissertation was titled "Social Solidarity and Its Effects on Musical Communication: An Empirical Analysis Of National Anthems."

Cerulo was an assistant professor of sociology at SUNY Stony Brook from 1985 to 1990. She joined the faculty of Rutgers University in the fall of 1990. In 1994, she received the School of Arts and Sciences’ "Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Education." In 2012, she won the university’s "Scholar-Teacher Award", an honor bestowed on faculty persons who have made outstanding contributions in both research and teaching. She chaired the Rutgers sociology department from 2009 to 2012.

Much of Cerulo’s work revolves around symbol systems and their role in communication. She studies both verbal and nonverbal systems, including language, music, graphic images, and scents. While most people focus on the content of symbols, Cerulo prioritizes symbolic structure. She defines symbolic structure as the spatial or temporal organization of a symbol’s constituent parts—i.e. the ways in which colors and shapes are combined in visual images or notes, sounds, odors or words are temporally sequenced in musical, olfactory or verbal messages. Cerulo argues that structure, like content, carries meaning for those creating and receiving symbol based messages. Therefore, it is important to understand how symbolic structure resonates with those involved in the communication process. Cerulo unfolds this agenda in several articles and two of her books: Identity Designs: The Sights and Sounds of a Nation and Deciphering Violence: The Cognitive Structure of Right and Wrong. These works highlight two important findings. First, Cerulo shows that certain symbolic structures are associated with predictable reactions from those receiving messages. By uncovering and understanding these patterns, she argues, one can greatly enhance communication effectiveness. Second, she demonstrates that symbol structures vary in predictable ways according to the sociocultural conditions under which they are produced or projected. Contextual factors such as cultural heterogeneity, political or social stability, existing power structures, dominant systems of economic exchange, professional norms of expression, the nature of social ties, or levels of "collective focus" are all associated with certain variants of symbolic structure. (Collective focus is a concept developed by Cerulo to gauge the points of attention to which a collective body is directed at a given moment; others have since utilized the term.) Some describe Cerulo’s work on symbolic communication as a "demonstration of research ingenuity," one that "makes important contributions to debates about meaning and measurement." Moreover, "her answers to questions of how rather than what symbols communicate merit the attention of all scholars working in the sociology of culture and symbolic anthropology."

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