2025 Saller Prize Recipient Announced

Yuchen Yang, from the Department of Sociology, has been selected as the 2025 Saller Prize recipient by a faculty review committee.

Kristen Schilt, an associate professor in Sociology, chaired Yang’s dissertation committee. In her letter of nomination for the Saller Prize, she wrote, “His dissertation, titled Indefinite Accomplishments: Gender, Childhood, and the Making of Difference, is an ambitious piece of research about gender, parenting, and childhood in the U.S. that stands to make a major contribution to theoretical approaches to gender in sociology.”

For his dissertation project, Yang conducted in-depth interviews with 72 parents (mostly white mothers) who had at least one child under 14 , exploring how parents who see themselves as gender progressive are navigating child-rearing and examining the cultural landscape. His interviews brought out ambivalences and inconsistencies around cultural beliefs about gender, as his interviewees struggle to give their children gender autonomy and to account for possible gender-stereotypical preferences for things such as clothing and toys. In his analysis, he combined strands of theories of gender socialization, ethnomethodological theories of gender (such as doing gender), and linguistic theories of gender.

Upon being notified of the award, Yang said, “It's such an honor to receive this prize. The Covid-19 pandemic made me pivot the entire dissertation project. But I feel incredibly privileged to be mentored by the best team of feminist scholars that one can dream of. As an international student, I am especially grateful to the many brilliant friends, colleagues, and professors who offered unwavering support throughout this challenging intellectual journey.”

Yang, PhD’24, is now an Assistant Professor in Sociology at the University of Birmingham. He also currently serves on the editorial board of the new ASA journal, Sex & Sexualities. While a doctoral student, he served as an Associate Editor for the American Journal of Sociology and was a residential/dissertation fellow at the Center for the Study of Gender and Sexuality. His research and teaching interests broadly include gender and (a)sexuality, family and childhood, culture and semiotics, social category and language use, as well as social theory and qualitative methodology. 

The review committee for the 2025 Saller Dissertation Prize consisted of Eman Abdelhadi, Assistant Professor of Comparative Human Development; Chiara Cordelli, Professor of Political Science; Rashauna Johnson, Associate Professor of US History; Fredrik Albritton Jonsson, Associate Professor of British History and Conceptual and Historical Studies of Science; Greg Norman, Associate Professor of Psychology; François G. Richard, Associate Professor of Anthropology; and Schilt.

The award is named for Richard P. Saller, the tenth Provost of the University of Chicago (2002-2006) and former Dean of the Division of the Social Sciences (1994-2002). Professor Saller joined the University of Chicago as an Associate Professor of Anthropology in 1984. He was awarded the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching in 1992 and was named the Edward L. Ryerson Distinguished Service Professor. He left UChicago in 2007 for Stanford University where he served as Dean of the School of Humanities and Sciences until 2018. He is presently the Kleinheinz Family Professor of European Studies at Stanford.

A full list of all Saller Prize recipients is available at https://socialsciences.uchicago.edu/about/divisional-awards/saller-prize