Sociology
at American University
NEWSLETTER 2012
Contents
From the Chair.................................1
Gert Harald Mueller: In
Memorium........................................2
Students Participate in
Alternative Break to Haiti..............2
CHRS Continues to Expand.........3
Emily Parker Wins Eastern
Sociological Society’s Undergraduate
Research Award........................3
Department News and Notes....4-7
Newest Alumni................................7
Welcome, jimi adams!......................8
Spotlight on Birth and Death
Course ..............................................8
American University
Department of Sociology
4400 Massachusetts Ave, NW
Washington, D.C. 20016-8029
202-885-2475
202-885-2477 (fax)
socio@american.edu
www.american.edu/cas/sociology
Department of Sociology
College of Arts & Sciences
From the Chair
Greetings! The year has been a very busy one
for me personally as I continue to learn all of the
responsibilities of being a chair, and also for the
department, as we move forward with implementing
our strategic plan to expand the research culture in
the department and develop our expertise in health
and society. In the fall, we were busy conducting
searches to fill two open positions, one assistant
professor in demography with a specialization in
health, and the other at the associate level, with
a record of scholarship and funding in the social
determinants of health. Happily, we hired jimi
adams, from Arizona State University, as an assistant
professor; he will start in August 2012. Our search
for an associate professor continues—so if you
are interested, or know someone who might be,
please contact me or Gay Young (chair of the
search committee). This spring, we started a new
departmental research seminar at which we share
our work, benefiting from the feedback of our
colleagues and developing a shared sense of our
many strengths as a department. We also continued
to expand the Center on Health, Risk, and Society
(CHRS), aimed at building an interdisciplinary group
of scholars at AU interested in the social aspects of
health and facilitating the development of related
collaborative research projects. Finally, under our
leadership, American University has become one of
six institutional affiliates of the DC Developmental
Center for AIDS Research (DC D-CFAR). This has
opened access to many new resources for conducting
HIV/AIDS related research at AU.
We are proud of our 26 minors and 63 majors, 22
of which graduated with a BA this past spring. As in
the past, our majors were a substantial presence at
the spring student research conference of the College
of Arts and Sciences, presenting papers on topics as
diverse as the media construction of neighborhood
desirability, racial identity in adoption, the tea party
in the media, masculinity in graphic novels, hoarding,
and the experience of incarcerated trans women.
Twenty students were inducted into Alpha Kappa
Delta, the international sociological honor society,
and four students were presented awards at our annual
Sociology Day the first day of May. Our 15 masters
students have excelled as well; and all but one of our
remaining doctoral students completed their degrees in
the summer or 2011.
In the pages that follow, you will see that our
faculty have contributed extensively to the discipline,
publishing books as well as articles in some of the
top journals in their subfields, successfully competing
for grants and contracts, presenting at professional
meetings, taking leadership positions in professional
organizations, excelling in the classroom, mentoring
undergraduate and graduate students, working
hard to serve local, national, and international
communities, and winning awards for their work.
Sadly, we acknowledge the passing of one of our
former colleagues, Gert Mueller. We are planning a
special event next year to highlight the significance of
sociological theory, in his honor.
Finally, I would like to thank each and every one
of my colleagues for their support, guidance, and
commitment to the department. Two very special
thanks; one goes to the faculty who worked so hard
in getting our last PhD students successfully through
the program; the other goes to Sandy Linden, whose
responsibilities have grown exponentially, even while
the time she has to accomplish them has remained the
same, and yet, she manages to keep us on track!
-Kim Blankenship
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American University Department of Sociology Newsletter
By Monica Biradavolu, PhD, Research Assistant Professor and Assistant
Director of CHRS
By Joseph R. Pearce (PhD ‘84) and Jurg K. Siegenthaler, Professor Emeritus,
American University
Photo by Joseph R. Pearce
posited in his theory by applying the tools of mathematical logic
and, more specifically, the “foundational truth function,” which he
constructed to map and test the relationships between what he called
“emergent and dominant superstructures.”
Mueller left a substantial body of original work in analytical
sociological theory, much of which remains unpublished. A selection of
these manuscripts can be found on the American University Department
of Sociology website (www.american.edu/cas/sociology/ast/index.cfm).
He published more than 75 journal articles and one book, Sociology and
Ontology: The Analytical Foundations of Sociological Theory (1989).
Last year, the department established the Sociology Legacy Fund
to honor the contributions to a sociological community—within and
outside our institution—of our past faculty including Dr. Mueller.
Please visit the following website to find out more about the fund
and how to make a donation (http://www.american.edu/cas/news/
sociology-legacy-fund.cfm).
Mueller is survived by his first cousin, Solveig Woelfel of Frankfurt,
Germany. In his trust he wrote, “I have no children, living or deceased.
My friends have been family to me.” He will be greatly missed by his
students and those who knew and loved him.
Editors’ note: This obituary was printed in the February 2012 issue of Footnotes,
a publication of the ASA. With their permission, it is reprinted here.
Students Participate in
Alternative Break to Haiti
In March 2012, graduate student Rebekah Israel served as
co-leader for the Alternative Break to Haiti. The trip explored
sustainable development through people as resources, with emphasis
on empowering women and youth. The student participants worked
closely with two Haitian organizations, the Association of Peasants of
Fondwa (APF) and Fonkoze, that empower rural communities through
microfinance and community led development projects.
Laura Vogler (BA ‘12) also participated and served as the official
photographer. She saw first-hand the difference these organizations
were making. She commented that the provision of “water filtration,
goats, solid houses with tin roofs, job skills, birth control, and
community support truly transformed the lives of the women and
their self-confidence.” Rebekah Israel said that the trip was life
changing for her, and that it also allowed her to engage the students in
sociological discussions about “structural inequalities and connecting
them to race, class, and gender disparities here in the U.S. and even
locally in the DC metropolitan area.”
3
CHRS Continues to Expand
Gert Harald Mueller:
In Memorium
Gert Harald Mueller, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at American
University, died at the age of 89 on October 23, 2011, in Washington, DC.
Mueller was born in Dresden, Germany, on July 20, 1922. After
WWII, he was admitted to the Freie Universität of West Berlin. He
received his PhD from the University of Munich in 1954. The title of
his dissertation was “The Structure of Pure Dialectics.”
He subsequently returned to Berlin to pass his first state examination,
which entitled him to teach history, philosophy, and French in the
German gymnasia system, where he taught from 1954 to 1962. After
spending several years as a private scholar, he accepted a position as
assistant professor at the University of Pittsburgh, where he taught
sociology from 1968 to 1972.
In 1973, he became an assistant professor at American University, where
he advanced to full professor and taught sociology until his retirement in
1991. As an emeritus professor, he remained active in pursuing his research
and writing on sociological theory up to the time of his death.
Mueller’s work in analytical sociological theory was the fruit of
more than 50 years of scholarly research. His work in theory was
the product of a painstaking curiosity leading to exhaustive studies
in religion, philosophy, history, and sociology. The body of Mueller’s
work bears witness to a lifelong passion for uncompromising
scholarship and intellectual craftsmanship in the pursuit of sociology
as a rigorous science.
He was a scholar in the classical mold whose breadth of
knowledge reflected a singular dedication to thinkers who came before
him, theorists like Aristotle, Comte, Hegel, Marx, Weber, Husserl, and
Wittgenstein. He argued that reality (physical, biological, social, moral,
and cultural) could be conceived most fruitfully as forming a hierarchy
of founding and controlling relationships that condition social reality
rather than determine it. Mueller tested the hierarchical relationships
American University Department of Sociology Newsletter
The Center on Health, Risk, and Society (CHRS) continues its
expansion with the addition of Assistant Professor Michael Bader
in the Department of Sociology. Dr. Bader researches cities and ways
in which people interact with the built environment. His scholarship
centers on racial and economic segregation, neighborhood inequality,
and health and nutrition disparities. In the fall 2012, newly hired
Assistant Professor jimi adams will also work closely with CHRS (see
related story).
CHRS continues to support student research including five MA
students in sociology (Christine Gordon, Rebekah Israel, Sarah
Okorie, Elizabeth Puloka, and Lori Sommerfelt) and one PhD
student in anthropology (Ashante Reese). Two undergraduate
students, Krys Benyamein (government) and Erik Jacobsen
(sociology) worked as interns at the center. For a second summer in a
row, CHRS will host interns from institutions across the US as part of
an NIH-funded summer research program.
Following the success of last year’s “Getting to Know Your
Colleagues” seminar series, the center continued the format of a weekly
seminar. We invited newly-hired colleagues from across AU, with
research interests in health, to present their work and be introduced
to CHRS, including professors Michael Bader of sociology, Nina
Yamanis of SIS, and Taryn Morrissey of SPA.
Several guest speakers from outside AU presented their work: Dr.
Fernando De Maio of De Paul University presented his ongoing
work on the health effects of income inequality in Argentina; Dr.
Lakshmi Goparaju of Georgetown University presented her
research on African-American women’s perceptions of the down-low
phenomenon among Black men; Samson Njomole, an HIV activist
from Malawi, spoke about HIV and nutrition outcomes in rural Malawi;
Dr. Elizabeth Rigby of George Washington University spoke on the
public support for redistribution to address inequality; Dr. Jennifer
Huang of Georgetown University talked about her ongoing work
on migration, sex work, and HIV in China; and Drs. Maria-Cecilia
Zea, Paul Poppen, Carol Reisen, and Fernanda Bianchi of George
Washington University presented findings from their research on
MSMs, internal displacement, and HIV risk in Colombia.
The center also organized some seminars as “works-in-progress,”
to allow CHRS-affiliated faculty across AU to get input on grant
proposals, papers in the revise-and-resubmit stage and research ideas
for new projects. One or two discussants were assigned ahead of time
and the papers/proposals distributed in advance. Professors Michael
Bader, Kim Blankenship, Daniel Esser, and Rachel Robinson
received feedback on papers; Professors Maria De Jesus and Nina
Yamanis got input on grant proposals; and Tamara Hafner shared
her ideas for a new research project.
CHRS Director and Sociology Chair, Kim Blankenship, has
received funding from the NIH to organize a conference in fall
2012 entitled, “Community Disruption and HIV Risk: Re-entry,
Gentrification, and HIV/AIDS in the District of Columbia.” The
conference will focus on social structural processes critical in shaping
HIV/AIDS risk in DC and, arguably, in producing race and ethnic
disparities in that risk. As part of the preparation for this conference,
and to increase collaboration across centers at AU, CHRS is working
with the Center on Latino and Latin American Studies (CLALS)
to include the issue of the health impacts of deportation within
immigrant communities.
In addition to providing a space for intellectual engagement among
health scholars, the center also acquired licenses to various analytical
software programs in the past year. CHRS is now equipped with
ArcGIS, NVivo, SPSS, STATA and UCINet, which are open for use by
faculty, staff, and students affiliated with CHRS. The center sponsored
a one-day training session on NVivo in May 2012.
The CHRS website now features all faculty affiliated with the center
and their specific topical and methodological expertise. Next year,
the focus will be on forming collaborative teams in support of the
development of grant proposals, organizing groups around specific
topic areas, and continuing the expansion of our presence as a center
of excellence in health research in the Washington, DC area. To learn
more about the center and its activities, or to become involved, please
visit the CHRS website (www.american.edu/cas/sociology/chrs).
Emily Parker Wins Eastern Sociological
Society’s Undergraduate Research Award
by Abbey Becker
Photo by Laura Vogler
As a sophomore, Emily Parker (BA ‘12), interned with a social worker
at a nonprofit organization that worked with elderly tenants of apartment
buildings or subsidized housing in the District to help prevent eviction,
mainly due to hoarding issues. When she enrolled in Professor Michael
Bader’s Health and the City course, he suggested that she submit an abstract
to present at the ESS. Parker presented her poster in New York at the
conference. “A lot of people were really excited about the topic and couldn’t
believe when I told them that there’s never been any sociological research
on it,” she says. “My research is trying to initiate a sociological understanding
of the subject,” says Parker. She wanted to frame the subject as less of an
individual psychological problem and focus more on the larger societal
factors that manifest themselves in individual behaviors. “These were factors
like trauma in one’s life, social isolation, lack of family ties, unemployment,
socioeconomic status, and especially aging and how aging in our society in
particular can precipitate hoarding behavior,” she explains.
While hoarding isn’t
exclusive to lower income
population, it’s certainly
more apparent. “It’s
more obvious if you
don’t have the means to
store your things or pay
for someone to clean
up your apartment, or if
you don’t have someone
coming in to inspect,”
says Parker. “If you own
a mansion, then people
probably won’t know if
you hoard.”
Photo by Natalia Ruiz-Junco
Editors’ note: Please see expanded story on the department website
American University Department of Sociology Newsletter
4
Department of Sociology News and Notes
FACULTY
Over the summer, Michael Bader will continue development of
a platform using Google Street View to measure neighborhood
environments. The project is funded by a National Institute of Child
Health and Human Development grant. He published two journal
articles: the first, in City and Community, investigates preferences for
redeveloped neighborhoods; the second, in the American Journal of
Public Health, examines the association between local racial residential
segregation and low birth weight births in Michigan metropolitan
areas. He was invited to a specialist meeting on the topic of Spatial
Demography in December and a conference entitled “Great Cities,
Ordinary Lives” at the University of Illinois-Chicago, and presented
results from his own work at the Population Association of America
meeting in May. This year he taught the classes Health in the City,
Sociology of the City, and Power Privilege and Inequality.
Monica Biradavolu has begun a new research project with colleagues
from the NIH and the Department of Health. The Washington DCbased research is on the barriers to provision of HIV services for the
severely mentally ill in the DC metropolitan area. She has continued her
engagement with DC-DCFAR (District of Columbia Developmental
Center for AIDS Research) and is now a member of a Scientific Working
Group on mental illness and HIV. As assistant director, she continues to
help build the Center on Health, Risk, and Society (CHRS) and work on
Project Parivartan, an HIV research project based in Southern India. In
the past year, she published two papers in the Journal of Epidemiology and
Community Health, based on data from Project Parivartan.
Kim Blankenship continues work on three large collaborative projects
funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (2 different research
projects on HIV risk and prevention in India) and one from NIDA (a
longitudinal mix-methods study of the impact of movement between
the criminal justice system and the community on race disparities in
HIV). She has been awarded a large subcontract to collaborate with
Blair Johnson (Psychology, UCONN, funded by NIMH) in which she
will lead a meta-analysis of structural interventions for HIV prevention.
She also received a grant to hold a fall conference on community
disruption and HIV risk in DC (see related story). She accomplished
making American University one of six institutional partners in the
DC Developmental Center for AIDS Research (DC-DCFAR), offering
resources to AU faculty interested in conducting HIV-related research.
This past year, she presented at various professional meetings and
published a book chapter and six articles in such journals as Social
Science and Medicine, Journal of Infectious Diseases, and Journal of Epidemiology
and Community Health, many of these were collaborations with current
or former post-doctoral fellows and graduate students. She taught
her first undergraduate course, Gender, Poverty and Health, which
subsequently won the Center for Teaching, Research, and Learning’s
award for Teaching with Research.
This past year, Jill Niebrugge-Brantley served as President of the
District of Columbia Sociological Society (DCSS). Along with Patricia
Lengermann, she presented at the Eastern Sociological Society
(ESS) and with Roberta Spalter-Roth (PhD ‘84) of the American
Sociological Association (ASA) on the panel “Stories of Women: Race,
Class and Status in Historical Context.” This summer, Lengermann
and Niebrugge-Brantley are scheduled to present at the Society for
the Study of Social Problems meetings in a thematic session on “NonProfit Organizations and Engagement in Communities.” They have just
finished three manuscripts: one for a volume of papers based on the
theme of last year’s SSSP conference; a second, in the Essays in Classical
Sociological Theory series; and a third in George Ritzer’s Contemporary
Social Theory and Its Classical Roots.
Andrea Malkin Brenner continues to serve as undergraduate advisor,
honors coordinator, and AU abroad advisor. In addition to teaching
the capstone class, she directs internships in the department. She
also serves on the general education curriculum committee for CAS.
Recently, she published several entries in the Encyclopedia on Death
and Dying, including submissions on animism, cannibalism, curses,
totemism, and superstition.
Esther Ngan-ling Chow, Professor Emerita, made a presentation,
“Feminist Strategies for Creative Retirement,” at the winter meeting
of the Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS). She co-edited a
book, Social Production and Reproduction at the Interface of Public and Private
Spheres, volume 16 of Advances in Gender Research, to be published
by Emerald Press in 2012. She also continues her work with the True
Light Foundation.
Alan Dahl continues to teach critical social thought and global
sociology. His continues his research (with Natalia Ruiz-Junco)
on the role of emotions in the Bread and Roses strike in Lawrence,
Massachusetts in 1912. Their paper “Milltown Emotions” was
presented at the 2011 annual conference of the International Society
for Research on Emotions in Kyoto, Japan. He submitted three entries
to The New Encyclopedia of Southern Culture: Social Class (forthcoming
2012) including those on the readjusters, the greenbackers, and place,
space, and class (with co-author Dwight Billings).
Bette Dickerson continued her service-learning and community
engagement work with community partners in South Africa as the
faculty sponsor of AU’s Alternative Break: South Africa. She also
developed the 8-week Community-based Learning and Service
Program: South Africa for AU’s Center for Community Engagement
and Service. Her work in South Africa was featured in articles
published in AMERICAN: Magazine of American University (May
2011) and A&U: America’s AIDS Magazine (Dec. 2011). She is a
member of the Planning Committee for the 2012 annual meeting
of the International Association of Research on Service-Learning
and Community Engagement. This year, she presented papers at the
ESS and the Southern Sociological Society meetings. In addition to
coediting two books (Black Senior Women: Race, Age, and Sexuality and
Notions of Family: Intersectional Perspectives), she has a forthcoming book
chapter, “Single Mothering in Poverty: Black Feminist Considerations”
in Advances in Gender Research. Currently, she is on the advisory board
of a study of Black women called “Outlook on Life and Political
Engagement” funded by the National Science Foundation.
Kate Frank, scholar in residence, is currently working on a book
tentatively titled Plays Well in Groups: An Anthropologist Journeys through
the World of Group Sex. The book is expected to be published in 2013.
She continues to teach the Feminist and Gender Theory course for the
Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) program.
5
American University Department of Sociology Newsletter
Brenda Kirkwood served as Instructor of Sociology and Assistant
Director of the Public Health program. In addition to launching AU’s
new public health major and minor, Dr. Kirkwood remains active in
national initiatives aimed at undergraduatepublic health education. She
recently presented on this topic at the annual meetings of the American
Public Health Association and the Association of American Colleges
and Universities. In spring 2012, she completed her doctoral degree
from the George Washington University School of Public Health and
Health Services. We wish her well in her new endeavors.
Randa Serhan has been keeping busy revising the Arab Studies
Program and bolstering its presence on campus. In November 2011,
a book she co-edited, American Democracy and the Pursuit of Equality,
was published by Paradigm Press. She also published “Palestinian and
Jordanian immigrants,” in Multicultural America: An Encyclopedia of the
Newest Americans by ABC-CLIO Publishers. She served on several
scholarship panels at AU and an USAID grant panel. Over the summer,
she will be working on a book about assimilation and identity politics
of Palestinian-Americans titled, Suspended Community.
Susan McDonic continues her exploration into Buddhist International
development processes and philosophy. This year she initiated and
organized the first annual “Ten Days for Tibet” on campus, featuring
varied events and speakers on Tibet. She also continues to serve as
the faculty advisor for the Alternative Break Program and will travel
to Northern India for the third time. Additionally, she is the faculty
advisor for Students for Tibet. This past year, she served as chair of the
speakers and events committee for the department.
Jurg Siegenthalar, professor emeritus, has been engaged in
consultancy research on pension and elder issues. He has spent the
year volunteering for the centennial of the 1912 Bread and Roses
Strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts, where he co-organized an academic
symposium on historical and contemporary labor issues. In the fall, he
is producing a “speaker’s tent” on urban and labor history for the Bread
and Roses Labor Day Festival; his wife, Linda, serves as chair of the
Bread and Roses Heritage Committee.
This summer, Michelle Newton-Francis will be conducting
fieldwork on erotic labor in Las Vegas and Los Angeles. Expanding
on her research in the U.S., she is beginning comparative research,
with Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, on Hooters in the U.S. and Colombia.
She continues to serve on the council of the Body and Embodiment
section of the ASA, and chairs an award committee for the DCSS.
After retiring in 2010, Russell Stone chaired an interdisciplinary
search committee for a new director of AU’s Center for Israel
Studies, who will also be the inaugural Seymour and Lillian Abensohn
Chair in Israel Studies.
With an international team of eight scholars, Celine-Marie Pascale
is applying for a European Cooperation in Science and Technology
(COST) Basic Research Grant to examine how the standardization
of language use (Spanish, English, and French) in industrial and
service sector call centers both facilitates work and maintains linguistic
hierarchies of race, class, and gender. This year, Pascale presented
papers at the International Institute of Sociology (IIS) 40th World
Congress in Dehli, India, and at the Second Sociological World Forum
in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her second book, Cartographies of Knowledge,
won the 2012 International Congress on Qualitative Inquiry Award
for an English language book that makes an important contribution to
the field of qualitative inquiry for “charting new territories.” Pascale’s
newest book Social Inequalities in a Global Landscape: The Politics of
Representation is forthcoming this summer (with Sage).
In March, Natalia Ruiz-Junco was quoted on volunteerism in the U.S. in
El País, a national Spanish newspaper. Her work on identity construction
in the Spanish environmental movement was published in the Journal
of Contemporary Ethnography. She also published on self-estrangement in
Current Perspectives in Social Theory. She was an invited panelist at the Centro
de Investigaciones Interdisciplinarias en Ciencias y Humanidades of the Universidad
Autónoma de México (UNAM), Mexico City (see related story). In February,
she attended the ESS meetings, where she was an invited panelist.
Rachel Robinson published two articles during the past year: the first
connects family planning interventions with later HIV outcomes in
African countries, out in the Journal of the International AIDS Society; the
second, on population policy in Nigeria, came out in Population Research
and Policy Review. Her ongoing work includes Intimate Interventions, a book
analyzing the relationship between pregnancy prevention and HIV
prevention in Africa and collaborative work on the predictors of health
outcomes at the sub-national level in Africa. This summer, she will be
running for a position on the council of the newly formed Sociology of
Development section of the ASA. In addition, she will be collecting data
on NGOs at the biennial International AIDS Conference here in DC.
During 2012, Salvador Vidal-Ortiz is enjoying a sabbatical in
Bogotá, Colombia, and continues his research on displacement and
forced migration (post-Fulbright). He is serving as liaison for SWS’
Global Feminist Partnership - with the Instituto Pensar of the Pontificia
Universidad Javeriana and is the convener/editor for a creative writing
book on the experiences and organizing of Colombian trans people
and their allies, to be published by Instituto Pensar. He is a guest
editorial board member for the Journal of Homosexuality on a
“trans-sexualities” themed issue; part of the editorial board of Duke’s
new journal, TSQ: Transgender Studies Quarterly, and co-chair for the
Caucus on Transnational Approaches to Gender and Sexuality. This summer,
he will teach a course, Sociological Perspectives on Race and Ethnicity, as an
invited Faculty-in-Residence Teaching Program (FIRST) professor at
the University of Colorado, Boulder.
Chenyang Xiao continues his research on environmental attitudes,
beliefs, and behaviors. A manuscript examining gender dimensions
on this subject will appear in Society and Natural Resources. Another
manuscript examining the relationship between environmental
concern and attitudes toward science and technology in the USA is
also forthcoming in Environment and Behavior. Along with a Chinese
colleague, he completed a book project that examines public
perceptions of environmental issues and support for environmental
policies in Mainland China (to be published in 2012). To overcome data
issues encountered in these projects, Dr. Xiao and five colleagues (one
from AU) are seeking external funding for an international survey that
aims to compare and contrast China and the U.S. in terms of concerns
for both environment and health.
Gay Young continues to serve as director of the graduate program.
This marked her last year as the director of the Women’s, Gender, and
Sexuality Studies Program after seven years of service. She chaired
the search committee resulting in the hire of jimi adams (see related
story). This summer, she will travel again to Jerusalem, which is the
base for her ongoing research on Israeli women’s and feminist peace
activism that involves interviews with activists and participation in
actions of protest and resistance to the occupation.
American University Department of Sociology Newsletter
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
In April, Margaret Campbell presented her capstone project on
Sexuality and Social Media at the Momentum: Making Waves in
Sexuality, Relationships, and Feminism Conference in Washington, DC.
Emily Parker won the ESS Undergraduate Research Award for her
poster presentation on hoarding in the elderly population in low
income, urban environments (see related story).
As a social action project requirement for the SPA Leadership
Program, Zach Baldwin produced an educational video on what it
means to be transgendered.
GRADUATE STUDENTS
This spring, Rebekah Israel, co-developed/co-lead the Alternative
Break: Haiti program sponsored by AU’s Center for Community
Engagement and Service.
At the ASA meetings this summer, Erik Kojola and professor
Chenyang Xiao will present a paper that explores union membership and environmental beliefs and attitudes.
In the fall of 2012, Kaleemah Sumarah will begin the PhD program at Wayne State University in her hometown of Detroit, Michigan, where she has been an activist on various issues. She recently
presented a paper on activism at the ESS meetings in New York and
was awarded a stipend to attend the 2012 Summer Workshop on
African American Aging at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.
Sarah Okorie also presented a paper at the 2012 ESS meetings in
New York. She will pursue a PhD in sociology at the University of
Central Florida where she received two major funding awards: UCF
Trustees Doctoral Fellowship (internal) and the Florida Education
Fund’s (FEF) Mcknight Doctoral Fellowship (external).
ALUMNI
As an incident management analyst at the Department of Homeland
Security, Carimanda Baynard (MA ‘10) monitors disaster
preparedness, crisis management, and emergency management related
issues that could potentially impact national security.
In September 2011, Kameisha Bennett (MA ‘07) joined Interfaith
Works as the new Programs and Administration Officer. In this role,
Bennett provides oversight to all programs and work to better aid in
communication between the staff and programs.
Katie Beran (BA ‘09) is graduating from the law school of the
University of Pennsylvania and will soon begin working at a law firm
in Philadelphia. She co-founded the Penn Law Civil Rights Law Project
(CRLP), one of the larger pro bono student projects at the law school,
where student volunteers have worked on civil rights legal issues
through internship placements and ad-hoc research assignments. Her
article, “Revisiting the Prostitution Debate: Uniting Liberal and Radical
Feminism in Pursuit of Policy Reform” was published in Law and
Inequality: A Journal of Theory and Practice.
Sarah Bruce Bernal (MA ‘11) currently works in the Office of
International Programs for the Food and Drug Administration.
Maria Bryant (PhD ‘11) has received the Excellence in Teaching award
from the National Society of Leadership and Success.
6
Anna-Britt Coe (BA ‘89, MA ‘98) is currently in a two-year postdoctoral fellowship at the Umeå Center for Gender Studies (where
she received her PhD in sociology in 2010). For the post-doc, she is
completing research that compares youth and adult feminist activists
in Peru and Ecuador. This year, she returned to Ecuador to share and
discuss the findings on youth activism on sexual and reproductive
health with young activists as well as policymakers.
Joanna Dees (MA ‘10) currently serves as the Director of Corporate
Relations and Supplier Diversity at the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber
of Commerce.
Rosemary Erickson (PhD ‘94) was recently quoted in USA Today on
crime near train stations and airports. She was also interviewed on two
television programs, 20/20 and the Dr. Phil Show, on the importance of
not resisting in a robbery.
Tekisha Everette (PhD ‘11) is the managing director of federal
government affairs for the American Diabetes Association.
Tara Mancini (MA ‘10) is a research assistant at the Georgetown
Health Policy Institute, Center for Children and Families, whose focus
is strengthening public health insurance programs, such as Medicaid and
CHIP, and implementation issues related to the Affordable Care Act.
Susan Archer Mann (MA ‘75) is professor and associate chair of the
department of sociology at the University of New Orleans. Her book,
Doing Feminist Theory: From Modernity to Postmodernity, was published this
year by Oxford University Press.
Enrique Pumar (PhD ‘99) currently serves as the sociology department
chair at Catholic University, where he is also a fellow and executive
board member of the Institute for Catholic Research and Policy Studies.
In 2011, he was elected to the Sociology of Development Council for
the ASA. This summer his edited volume, Hispanic Migration and Urban
Development, will be published. He also has two manuscripts forthcoming;
one in Theory in Action and the other in the UDC Law Review Journal.
Recently, he was awarded a grant to advise the Smithsonian Office of
Latino Affairs on a project of Hispanic migration to DC.
During his first year of the doctoral program at the University of
Texas, Austin, Brandon Robinson (BA ‘09) has an article forthcoming
in Sexuality Research & Social Policy. This summer, he will present two
papers at the ASA meetings, one at the sexualities mini-conference
(pre-ASA) and the other at the sexualities roundtables.
Rima Sabban (PhD ‘96) published Maids Crossing: Domestic Workers
in the UAE in March 2012. The book explores the treatment of
domestic workers in the UAE.
Eliz Storelli (MA ‘09) finished coursework and exams for her PhD
in Sociology (Boston College) and is now working on her dissertation
proposal. She is back in the DC area and works part-time as the
Development and Volunteer Coordinator at Community Family
Life Services, a non-profit providing housing and social services to
homeless and low income persons in DC.
IN MEMORIUM
With sadness, we report the death of Merhad Mashayekhi (PhD
‘79) who passed away in October 2011. Born in Iran, and a scholar
on post-revolutionary Iran, he taught at a number of schools in the
DC metropolitan area and was most recently a visiting professor at
Georgetown University.
American University Department of Sociology Newsletter
7
Congratulations to Our Newest Alumni
Graduates
Cynthia Bragg
PhD Dissertation: Women’s Leadership in the Black
Church: Barriers to and Empowerment of Clergywomen
in the Church of God in Christ
Gina Finelli
PhD Dissertation: From the Dinner Table to the Boardroom:
The Effects of Nepotism on Family Businesses
Ashawnda Fleming
PhD Dissertation: Lifting as We Climb: A Study of
African-American Lesbian Community Building in
Baltimore City
Christine Gordon
MA Thesis: Sexuality and Student Health: Access
to Sexual and Reproductive Health Resources and
Information at American University
Natasha McClendon
MA Thesis: The Influence of Math and Natural Science
Discourse on Black Women’s Performance, Self-Concept
and Retention in Math and Natural Science
Sally Mohamed
PhD Dissertation: Idealized Masculinity: Images of White
Men’s Bodies and White Men’s Ideas about Masculinity
Jordan Naod
PhD Dissertation: Informationalism: Computer Systems
and the Values of Triple Surplus Labor
Cynthia Parris
PhD Dissertation: Sociology of Knowledge Military Suicide
Elizabeth Poluka
MA Thesis: A Frame Analysis of Probation
and Parole Officer Attitudes and Perceptions of Reentrants
Nina Smith
PhD Dissertation: Great Expectations: The Role of SelfPerception and Educational Expectation on the CollegeBound Preparatory Process Black Girls Implement
Lori Sommerfelt
MA Project: Marriage and Black Male College Students:
An Intersectionality Approach
Margarita Studemeister
PhD Dissertation: The Political Incorporation through
Citizenship of Salvadoran Forced Migrants in the
Washington Metropolitan Area
Saori Takahashi
MA Thesis: Cypriot Women and Peace Negotiations:
Perceptions of the Process and Issues of Concern
Lucilia Villa Nova Tremura
PhD Dissertation: Transnational Migrant Brazilian Women
in “Pink Collar Jobs” in the Greater Washington DC Area
Tiffany Waits
PhD Dissertation: Pierre Bourdieu’s Theory of Capital
and Parental School Choice Decisions: A National Study
Dora Oduor
PhD Dissertation: The Millennium Development Goals and
the Role of Partners in Development: The Influence of FaithBased Organizations on HIV/AIDS Prevention in Kenya
Sarah Okorie
MA Thesis: College Choice Priorities Between US-born
Black and Foreign-born Black Students
Robert O’Quinn
PhD Dissertation: Modernization, Ethnicity, and Nationalism:
Developing a Unifying National Identity in Multicultural
Countries Formerly Subjugated to Colonialism
Undergraduates
(Majors and Minors)
Scott Berman
Rachel Birnbaum
Jaclyn Blumenfeld
Abra Burkett
Kanika Bynum
Margaret Campbell
Lauren Collier
Blaise Corso
Sam Dean
Mary Donoghue
Rachel Frank
Asalou Givens
Allison Godfrey
Marina Gonzalez
Sarah Hermans
Jessie Himmelstern
Sam Jackson
Erik Jacobsen
Bridget Joyce
Kathleen McKenna
Alison Olhava
Emily Parker
Casey Pladus
Anne Probst
Isabel Rosa
Graham Salinger
Adam Shachat
Matthew Stewart
Margaret Trachsel
Laura Vogler
Jue Wang
Sara Westheim
Do you have news to share? We want to hear from you!
Please send updates to socio@american.edu
The newsletter is edited by the communications committee:
Monica Biradavolu; Michelle Newton-Francis; Chenyang Xiao; Salvador Vidal-Ortiz
FACULTY SPOTLIGHT
Natalia Ruiz-Junco was invited to speak (in November 2011) at the
Humanities and Social Sciences Institute of the prestigious Universidad
Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), an important research-based
university in Mexico City and the country as a whole. She spoke to the
work of Marianne Weber, a feminist social theorist who made an important
theoretical contribution in the area of gender and inequality. Weber is
considered one of the “women founders” of classical social theory. Ruiz
Junco’s presentation was entitled “The Women Founders in Sociological
Discourse and Interpretive Theory.” With UNAM sociologist Maya Aguiluz,
Dr. Ruiz Junco continues to build collaborations to think about classical
sociological theory in these transnational conversations.
American University Department of Sociology Newsletter
8
Spotlight on Birth and
Death Course
Dr. Andrea Brenner’s passion to teach a course on the study of
birth and death began when she was an undergraduate at Brandeis
University. There, she took sociologist Dr. Morrie Schwartz’s course on
birth and death. Schwartz was the inspiration for the book Tuesdays with
Morrie. For the past five years, Brenner taught the Sociology of Birth
and Death which is very popular among undergraduates.
The course examines the sociological dimensions of “human entry
and exit” which are commonly discussed as “natural.” Students explore
the ways in which entry/exit is structured by socio-cultural forces which
support, control, and constrain the contexts in which birth and death
happens. This exploration includes field trips to a funeral home and
maternity ward, guest speakers, and a pregnancy simulation. Two major
assignments, a birthography and deathography, allow students to apply
course content to their everyday lives. For the birthography, students
examine the events leading up to their birth, the actual birthing process,
and its aftermath using interviews with those who remember it. For the
Photo by Laura Vogler
deathography, students reflect on end of life issues and work with an
older family member to construct a living will.
The course impacts students’ lives. Ellen Frye (BA ‘08), took the
course after the death of her mother and learned that “while grief
often presents itself in similar ways among grievers, it is not a linear
process.” Matthew Stewart (BA ‘12) found that the course helped
him realize “how sociology and medicine intersect,” which in part
influenced his decision to pursue a career in nursing with a focus on
hospice and palliative care.
Overall, the class aims to demystify the processes of birth and
birthing and death and dying.
Welcome, jimi adams!
In fall 2012, the department welcomes Dr. jimi adams (PhD, Ohio
State University) as Assistant Professor of Sociology. He will also
work closely with the CHRS. Most recently, he served as Assistant
Professor in the School of Social and Family Dynamics at Arizona
State University, where he was affiliated with the Center for Population
Dynamics. His research interests are in social networks, health, and
demography. His work focuses on
social networks as they pertain to
(1) information diffusion within
and across organizations and (2) the
spread and control of infectious
diseases. Much of this work has
focused on HIV-prevention in
high-risk populations. In the fall, he
will teach the undergraduate social
research methods course and an
honors course on social networks.
Photo by jimi adams
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Questions? Call 202-885-2986 or e-mail Dave Wiemer at wiemer@american.edu.