The Department of Sociology and Anthropology

Susan M. Chambré studies the relationship between citizenship, civil society and the politics of disease. Her recent book, Fighting for Our Lives: New York’s AIDS Community and the Politics of Disease (Rutgers University Press, 2006) analyzes the myriad social, political and scientific factors that influenced AIDS policy locally and nationally. It traces the emergence of a new organizational field and the interaction between advocacy, policy and social disorder in American cities in the closing decades of the 20th century.

With Melinda Goldner, she is coediting a volume for the Advances in Medical Sociology Series entitled Patients,Consumers and Civil Society: US and International Perspectives. A second book project, Saving Lives: Health Care Advocacy in the U.S., will examine the evolution, dimensions and policy impact of disease-related health social movements and health-related organizations.

Her previous publications considered the link between adolescent pregnancy and welfare dependency, the social and cultural determinants of volunteerism by elders, the changing nature of Jewish philanthropy, and the role of community organizations and foundations in shaping AIDS policy.

She is a member of the editorial board of Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly and the Australian Journal of Volunteering.

Before coming to Baruch, Professor Chambré taught at Yeshiva University and the State University of New York at Stony Brook and was a Research Scientist at the New York City Human Resources Administration. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Selected publications:

• Fighting for Our Lives: New York’s AIDS Community and the Politics of Disease (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2006).

• Good Deeds in Old Age: Volunteering by the New Leisure Class (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1987).

• “Volunteering.” The Encyclopedia of Retirement and Finance, Lois N. Vitt, ed., 2003, pp. 764-769.

• “Beyond the Liability of Newness: Nonprofit Organizations in an Emerging Policy Domain.” ((with Naomi Fatt). Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 31, 4, December 2002, pp. 502-524.

• “The Changing Nature of ‘Faith’ in  Faith-Based Organizations Secularization and Ecumenicism in Four AIDS Organizations in New York City.” Social Service Review, 75, 3, September 2001, pp. 435-455.

• “Parallel Power Structures, Invisible Careers and the Changing Nature of  American Jewish Women’s Philanthropy.” Jewish Journal of Communal Service, 76, 3, Spring 2000, pp. 205-215.

• “Redundancy, Innovation and Fragmentation: HIV/AIDS Nonprofit Organizations in New York City, 1981-1992.” Policy Studies Journal, 27 # 4 (1999): 840-854.

• “Jewish Women’s Philanthropy.” In Paula Hyman and Deborah Dash Moore, eds., Jewish Women in America: An Historical Encyclopedia. Routledge, 1997:1049-1054.

• “Civil Society, Differential Resources, and Organizational Development: HIV/AIDS Organizations in New York City, 1982-1992.” Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 26 #4 (December 1997): 466-488.

• “AIDS Funding and the Rhetoric of Scarcity.” Nonprofit Management and Leadership,  7, #2 (Winter 1996): 155-168.

• “Funding the Fight Against AIDS in New York City: The Evolution of Private Funding, 1983-1992.” Health Affairs, 15, 1 (Fall 1996): 250-260.

• “HIV/AIDS as a Chronic Disease: Emergence from the Plague Model.”  with Christy L. Beaudin,  American Behavioral Scientist, 39 #6 (May 1996): 684-706.

• “Creating New Nonprofit Organizations as Response to Social Change: HIV/AIDS Organizations in New York City.” Policy Studies Review,  14, #1-2 (Spring/Summer 1995): 117-127.

• “Uncertainty, Diversity, and Change: The AIDS Community in New York City.” Research in Community Sociology, edited by Dan A. Chekki. Volume 6, 1996, Westport, CT.: JAI Press,  1995: 149-190.

• “Being Needful: Family, Love and Prayer Among AIDS Volunteers.” Research in the Sociology of Health Care, Volume 12, edited by Jennie Jacobs Kronfeld. Westport, Ct.: JAI Press,  1995: 113-39.

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