Expertise

Medical Sociology; Sociology of Race & Ethnicity; Cultural Sociology; Qualitative Methods; Teaching Sociology

Biography

Matt Wray is a Professor of Sociology at Temple University. Prior to working at Temple, Wray was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Health and Society Scholar at Harvard University. He earned his BA at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and an MA and PhD from University of California, Berkeley. He has also been a Postdoctoral Fellow at the National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.

Wray is the author of Not Quite White: White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness (Duke, 2006) and the editor of Systems’ Impact on Historically and Currently Marginalized Populations (APHA, 2025); Cultural Sociology: An Introductory Reader (WW Norton 2013); The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness (Duke, 2001); Bad Subjects: Political Education for Everyday Life (New York University Press, 1998); and White Trash: Race and Class in America (Routledge, 1997). His journal articles have appeared in American Behavioral Scientist, Social Science & Medicine, American Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, and the Annual Review of Sociology, as well as numerous other publications. In 2023, Wray was awarded Temple's Great Teacher Award, the university's highest teaching honor.

Curriculum Vitae

Selected Publications

Journal Articles and Book Chapters

• 2025. In Press. Wray, Matt, Erika Blacksher, & Steven Woolf. “Health Inequities in White European Americans: Key Systems, Root Causes, and the Legacies of Whiteness.” Systems’ Impact on Historically and Currently Marginalized Populations. Washington, DC: American Public Health Association Press.
• 2025. Wray, Matt. “Poor White People in the Eugenic Imagination,” in J. Hubbs (ed.) Whiteness and American Literature. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (Cambridge Themes in American Literature and Culture), pp. 43–57. ISBN: 978100522793. DOI: 10.1017/9781009522748.005.
• 2023. Rodgers-Tonge, Decorti, Matt Wray & Carey Baldwin. “Supportive Programs and Financial Aid: Measuring Their Impact on Retention of Blacks and Latinx College Students in the New England Region.” The Journal of Business Diversity. 23 (4) pp. 1-13.
• 2023. Wray, Matt & Catherine Wolfe, “White Settler Colonialism, ‘Chromanyms,’ and the Trouble with Marginal Whites.” Rikke Andreassen et al., eds. Routledge International Handbook of New Critical Race & Whiteness Studies. London: Routledge. Pp. 406-418. ISBN: 9780367637699. DOI: 10.4324/9781003120612-42.
• 2019. Wray, Matt. “A Typology of White People in America.” In Lia Kindiger & Mark Schmitt, eds.Intersections of Whiteness. New York: Routledge. Pp. 38-52. ISBN: 9781351112796. DOI: 10.4324/9781351112796-3.

Courses Taught

Undergraduate

• Beyoncé & Taylor: Art, Politics, & Intersectionality
• Contemporary Sociological Theory
• Deadly Contagions: Pandemics Past, Present, & Future
• Historical Sociology of Race
• Introduction to Sociology
• Introduction to Sociology for Health Professions
• Putting Sociology to Work
• Race, Science, Health & Medicine
• Sociology on Drugs
• Trumpism 101: Democracy, Neoliberalism, and the Rise of Populism Urban Health

Graduate Seminars Taught

• Applied Qualitative Methods
• Cultural Sociology
• Dissertation Proposal Writing
• Racial Theory
• Urban Health
• Writing for Social Scientists