Mary Ann Lamanna is Professor Emerita of Sociology at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. She received her bachelor's degree Phi Beta Kappa from Washington University (St. Louis) in political science, her master's degree in sociology (minor in psychology) from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and her doctorate in sociology from the University of Notre Dame. Research and teaching interests include family, reproduction, and gender and law. She is the author of Emile Durkheim on the Family (Sage, 2002) and co-author of a book on Vietnamese refugees. She has articles in law, sociology, and medical humanities journals. Current research concerns the sociology of literature, specifically ?novels of terrorism? and a sociological analysis of Marcel Proust's novel In Search of Lost Time. Professor Lamanna has two adult children, Larry and Valerie.

Agnes Riedmann is Professor of Sociology at California State University, Stanislaus. She attended Clarke College, Dubuque. She received her bachelor's degree from Creighton University and her doctorate from the University of Nebraska. Her professional areas of interest are theory, family, and the sociology of body image. She is author of Science That Colonizes: A Critique of Fertility Studies in Africa (Temple University Press, 1993). Dr. Riedmann spent academic year 2008-09 as a Fulbright Professor at the Graduate School for Social Research, affiliated with the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, where she taught courses in family, as well as in social policy and in globalization.