Bio

Reuben A. Buford May is an urban ethnographer and Professor of Sociology at Texas A&M University. His research areas include Urban Ethnography, Race and Culture, and the Sociology of Sport.

Prof. Reuben May earned his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, is a Professor in the Sociology Department of Texas A&M. He is the author of Talking at Trena’s: Everyday Conversation at an African American Tavern (New York University Press, 2001) and Living Through the Hoop: High School Basketball, Race, and the American Dream (New York University Press, 2008).

As an urban ethnographer, he views the city as a laboratory for examining the complexities of social life. Research areas include Urban Ethnography, Race and Culture, the Sociology of Sport, and the Sociology of the Everyday. He was a 2009 Fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University, where he worked on a project titled “Race, Class, Culture, and Urban Social Space.”

While at MIT as an MLK Visiting Professor, he took a nuanced look at how African Americans negotiate the public spaces of downtown Athens, Georgia. His research goal is to theoretically elaborate the kinds of social forces that influence African Americans’ interactions with non-minorities. With Prof. Susan Sibley as his host in the Department of Anthropology, Prof. Reuben May offered undergraduate courses on “Urban Cultures” and “Sport and Culture”.

Video

At Texas A&M there are many talented professors, but any other school in the country have one that raps? Sociology of Sport professor Dr. Reuben Buford-May shows a certain skill you won't find from most professors.

At MIT

What Nightclub Crowds and Microbes Have in Common

MIT CoLab Radio (12/21/10)
With fellow MLK Scholar Hector Hugo Hernández (Civil and Environmental Engineering, 2010-11)