Professor Emerita of Sociology. Professor Lamanna received her Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Notre Dame in 1977 and her Master's in Sociology (with a minor in Psychology) from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She came to UNO in 1977, retiring in 2001 as a full professor.

Her teaching and research interest have focused on family and gender, and include law and social policy in those areas. Publications include:

• Emile Durkheim on the Family (2002)
• Marriages and Families: Making Choices in a Diverse Society, a textbook which will appear in a 9th edition in 2006 (co-author Agnes Riedmann)

She has articles in:

• Journal of Family Issues
• Journal of Law and Family Studies
• University of Michigan Journal of Law Reform
• Research in the Sociology of Health Care
• The Journal of Medical Humanities
• The Sociology Quarterly
• Family Perspectives
• Teaching Sociology
• Southwestern Historical Quarterly

She is also co-author of an early book on Vietnamese refugees.

Professor Lamanna is developing a new area of work in the sociology of literature. She presented a paper on "Three Novels of Terrorism: Explorations in the Politics of Literature" at the 2003 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. She plans a book on the early twentieth century French writer, Marcel Proust, examining the sociological themes in his multi-volume novel, In Search of Lost Time.