Rate My Professor Amy Best

Amy L. Best is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at George Mason University, where she also serves as the director of the Center for Social Science Research. Her research focuses primarily on the study of social inequalities, with specific interest in how gender, race and class differently shape the social experiences of contemporary American youth. She has published widely on unequal schooling, youth and childhood well-being, marketization, as well as community-based health disparities and food insecurity, drawing heavily on cultural and interpretive perspectives in sociology. Best has been awarded grants from National Science Foundation, Corporation for National Community Service, and U.S Department of Education. She is author of Prom Night: Youth, Schools and Popular Culture (2000 Routledge), which was selected for the 2002 American Educational Studies Association Critics’ Choice Award, Fast Cars: Cool Rides: The Accelerating World of Youth and Their Cars (NYU Press 2006), and editor of Representing Youth: Methodological Issues in Critical Youth Studies (NYU Press, 2007). Her most recent book is Fast Food Kids: French Fries, Lunch Lines and Social Ties (NYU Press, 2017), which was selected for a 2018 Morris Rosenberg Award by the DC Sociological Society.