New York University

Kimberly McClain DaCosta's research explores the intersection of cultural ideas about race, family, and consumption. A sociologist, she is especially interested in the contemporary production of racial boundaries. Her book, Making Multiracials: State, Family, and Market in the Redrawing of the Color Line (Stanford University Press, 2007), explores the cultural and social underpinnings of the movement to create multiracial collective identity in the United States. She is currently working on an ethnographic study of the advertising industry and the structural, economic, and cultural dimensions of ethnic marketing called Black Magic: African American Advertising, Symbolic Boundaries, and the Making of Inequality. Professor DaCosta's work has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Advertising Educational Foundation, and the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. She teaches courses on race in different societies, families, and consumerism in international perspective. Professor DaCosta also serves as Assistant Dean of Students at the Gallatin School.