| | | Department of Social and Cultural Sciences |
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| | | | | David O. Moberg Scholarship and Jay Balchunas Memorial Scholarship Award winners announced! Please see below to learn more about SOCS students, alums, and scholarship awardees. | | SOCS Faculty Play Key Role in MU’s EDUCATIONAL PREPAREDNESS PROGRAM | | The EPP Leadership Team (from left to right): Shar-Ron Buie, Darren Wheelock, Theresa Tobin, Robert S. Smith, Marisola Xhelili Ciaccio SOCS Associate Professor Darren Wheelock is Co-founder and Faculty Liaison for Marquette’s Educational Preparedness Program (EPP). Housed at Marquette University’s Center for Urban Research, Teaching and Outreach (CURTO) the EPP program is built on partnerships and provides pathways to higher learning, academic advising, and career services for the currently and formerly incarcerated. In the spring of 2022, SOCS Adjunct Associate Professor and Internship Director Wendy Volz Daniels will teach “Invisible Sentence: Policy and Practice for Children Who are Impacted by Parental Incarceration” inside the Racine Correctional Facility. SOCS Assistant Professor Dr. Anya Degenshein will teach “Surveillance, Law and Society” to MU students and members of the formerly incarcerated population on Marquette’s campus. Marquette student interest in EPP classes has been overwhelming – all of the College of Arts & Sciences courses filled within days and have lengthy waitlists. | | SOCS Faculty Receive Community Engaged Teaching Award Two Years in a Row | | 2021 AwardDr. Aleksandra Snowden, Associate Professor in SOCS, received Marquette University’s 2021 Community Engaged Teaching Award. The award recognized Dr. Snowden “for modeling community engagement for the leaders of tomorrow, showing how to use one’s skills and talents to be the difference for others.” Dr. Snowden partners with local criminal justice organizations and non-profits to create opportunities for students to work on real-world research problems. These collaborative partnerships foster experiential learning and create actionable insights to reduce crime and improve safety in communities. |
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| | 2020 AwardDr. Louise Cainkar, Professor in SOCS, received Marquette University’s 2020 Community Engaged Teaching Award. The award recognized Dr. Cainkar “for her transformational teaching, which has prompted Marquette students to challenge injustice in our communities and embrace diversity. Reflecting on Dr. Cainkar’s Islam Immersion Alternative Spring Break in Detroit, Department Chair Dr. Meghan Stroshine noted, “The result is a truly transformative, mission-centered educational experience that simply would not be possible in the confines of a classroom.” |
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| | NEW BOOKS BY SOCS FACULTY | | | BODIES IN EVIDENCE: RACE, GENDER, AND SCIENCE IN SEXUAL ASSAULT ADJUDICATION by Heather Hlavka, Associate Professor, SOCS, and Sameena Mulla “Powerful, unflinching, and at times heartbreaking.” Uncovers how the process of sexual assault adjudication reinforces inequality and becomes a public spectacle of violence. For victims in sexual assault cases, trials rarely result in justice. Instead, the courts drag defendants, victims, and their friends and family through a confusing and protracted public spectacle. Along the way, forensic scientists, sexual assault nurse examiners, and police officers provide their insight and expertise, shaping the story that emerges for the judge and jury. Bodies in Evidence draws on observations of over 680 court appearances in Milwaukee County’s felony sexual assault courts, as well as interviews with judges, attorneys, forensic scientists, jurors, sexual assault nurse examiners, and victim advocates. It shows how forensic science helps to propagate public misunderstandings of sexual violence by bestowing an aura of authority to race and gender stereotypes and inequalities. Expert testimony reinforces the idea that sexual assault is physically and emotionally recognizable and always leaves material evidence. The court’s reliance on the presence of forensic evidence infuses these very familiar stereotypes and myths about sexual assault with new scientific authority.
Bodies in Evidence reveals the human cost of sexual assault adjudication, and the social cost we all bear when investing in forms of justice that reproduce inequality and racial injustice. |
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| | ARAB AMERICAN WOMEN: REPRESENTATION AND REFUSAL by Louise Cainkar, Professor, SOCS, Suad Joseph and Michael Suleiman"A masterpiece. This is the most impressive, comprehensive, and courageous scholarly undertaking.” Arab American women have played an essential role in shaping their homes, their communities, and their country for centuries. Their contributions, often marginalized academically and culturally, are receiving long- overdue attention with the emerging interdisciplinary field of Arab American women’s studies. The collected essays in this volume capture the history and significance of Arab American women, addressing issues of migration, transformation, and reformation as these women invented occupations, politics, philosophies, scholarship, literature, arts, and, ultimately, themselves. Arab American women brought culture and absorbed culture; they brought relationships and created relationships; they brought skills and talents and developed skills and talents. They resisted inequities, refused compliance, and challenged representation. They engaged in politics, civil society, the arts, education, the market, and business. And they told their own stories. These histories, these genealogies, these narrations that are so much a part of the American experiment are chronicled in this unprecedented volume, providing an indispensable resource for scholars and activists. |
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| | | RETHINKING CLASS AND SOCIAL DIFFERENCE Vol: 37 by Michael McCarthy, Associate Professor, SOCS, and Barry Eidlin.Rethinking Class and Social Difference brings together contributions from scholars developing new social scientific and theoretical approaches to a wide range of differing forms of social difference and inequality, especially as they are rooted in and informed by the political economy of capitalism. These include race, nationalism, sexuality, professional classes, domestic employment, digital communication and uneven economic development. The volume is brought together by a focus on how seemingly class-neutral processes of social difference and inequality are deeply related to class inequality. Ultimately, the volume argues for a brave rethinking of the ways that class and other forms of social difference are bound together. |
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| | | ON THE VOCATION OF THE EDUCATOR AT THIS MOMENT, edited by Jennifer S. Maney and Melissa M. Shew of Marquette’s Center for Teaching and Learning. Four SOCS faculty contributed chapters to this book — which captures a specific moment in time as educators across the country and around the world were called to rethink their pedagogical strategies and vocations. |
| | Drs. Hoekstra & Rodrigues are pictured at a University-wide reception for the book at the Haggerty Museum of Art. |
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| | NEW SPRING COURSES ANTH 4255: Sex, Gender, and Evolution. Explores human sexuality in cross-cultural perspective, including deconstruction of sex/gender binaries, examining cross-cultural constructions of gender and sexuality, and the dangers of applying eugenicist thinking to human reproduction. Offered by Assistant Professor Rodrigues. CRLS 4500: Transformative Justice. Addresses the foundations of transformative justice through a lens of peacemaking and nonviolence using intersectional theories and analyses of violence and accountability. Considers abolition as a visionary process of dismantling carceral systems and building structures and relationships to replace it. Offered by Associate Professor Hlavka. CRLS 4930/5930: Criminal Justice Policy and Practice. Evaluates the effectiveness of a variety of criminal justice policies in relation to the unique goals of each component of the criminal justice system: law enforcement, the courts, and carceral systems, with specific attention given to the increased use of evidenced-based decision making. Offered by Adjunct Associate Professor Vicki Lupo. SOCI 3930: Latino/a Migration. Provides a sociological introduction to Latinx immigration, set in the context of history and U.S. involvement in Latin American countries, with a focus on experiences immigrating to the United States and the lives of immigrants post-migration. Offered by Visiting Assistant Professor Stephanie Dhuman. SOWJ/CRLS 3170: Invisible Sentence: Policy & Practice for Children Impacted by Parental Incarceration. Focuses on understanding the experiences and issues faced by children with incarcerated parents especially among racial, ethnic, and socioeconomically marginalized and disenfranchised populations. With an emphasis on collaborative learning, the class includes traditional MU students and an equal number of students who are incarcerated at the Racine Correctional Facility. Offered by Adjunct Associate Professor Wendy Volz Daniels. | | IMMERSIVE FIELD EXPERIENCESStudents at Marquette have a wide range of field immersion possibilities. Here are a few offered by SOCS faculty that go beyond our service learning and Internships directed by Professor Volz-Daniels. | | Comparative Crime and Punishment. Study Abroad in Finland, Estonia, Latvia & Lithuania. This summer course examines how deviance and criminality are both embedded in a larger socio-political economy and a reflection of it. Finnish policies are focused on human rights and take full responsibility for those brought into the system by working hard to rebuild families and reintegrate individuals into society. In contrast, the Baltic countries of Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia manage and respond to crime through harsh policies. Students learn how a comparative understanding of crime and punishment can lead not only to theoretical advancements but also to practical implications for crime and punishment policy. Summer 2022. Dr. Snowden. Islam Immersion in Metro Detroit. This transformative, high impact interfaith service and learning field trip takes place in metro Detroit, home to the largest concentrations of Muslims and mosques in the U.S. Students learn about the significant religious, social, cultural, economic, architectural, and political contributions of Muslims to the Detroit area by visiting a range of mosques, meeting with scholars, religious leaders, activists, and elected officials, and completing a day of service in partnership with local Muslim organizations. Students experience the diversity of American Muslims — Sunni, Shia, Sufi, African American, Arab, Asian, and eastern European. Personal transformation is enhanced by nightly guided Ignatian reflection sessions. Spring Break 2022. Dr. Cainkar. CRLS 6975: Criminal Justice Data Analytics Practicum. Ten graduate students in SOCS’ Criminal Justice Data Analytics Master’s program will be engaged with community partners on research projects that investigate pressing questions facing Milwaukee and Wisconsin communities. Practicum placements nurture bi-directional relationships between students and placement agencies to foster synergy and produce outcomes that are mutually beneficial. Students are afforded real-world work experience in the field of data analytics, while participating agencies will be provided the opportunity to examine data through the lens of Catholic Jesuit education, keeping with Marquette’s mission and tradition of service to the community. Spring 2022. Professor Lupo. | | FACULTY RESEARCH All of our SOCS faculty are actively engaged in research. Here are a few highlights. Bronzeville Neighborhood Archaeology Project | | | Dr. Jane Peterson is working on an urban, public archaeology project in Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood. Materials from excavations are housed in the Archaeology Laboratory at Marquette. Students have been processing and analyzing historical artifacts and conducting documentary research in support of the project. Archaeological materials excavated from Chicago’s Near South Side bear witness to forgotten sites and contribute to a more inclusive narrative about the city’s past. During the early part of the 20th century, large numbers of African Americans moved to Chicago as part of the Great Migration – pushed by violence in the Jim Crow South and pulled by economic opportunities in northern cities. Domestic deposits from the neighborhood are still preserved and provide a counterbalance to forces of historical erasure such as ‘urban renewal’ and gentrification. The excavations in several yards produced large amounts of construction material and debris documenting efforts to carve houses into small apartments in response to housing shortages caused by restrictive rules limiting where African Americans could live. Household deposits also demonstrate the limited and insufficient municipal services provided in these same neighborhoods. We also find a range of personal items from men, women, and children that provide tangible evidence of the daily activities of households navigating new, urban lifestyles. The project is possible through collaboration with a range of community partners including the Black Metropolis National Heritage Association, Chicago Park District, Chicago Public Schools, Chicago History Museum, Camp Douglas Restoration Foundation, Kenosha Museum, and others, who contribute to preserving the experiences and memory of Chicago’s Bronzeville neighborhood. Dr. Peterson is exploring the possibility of beginning a similar archaeological project in Milwaukee's Bronzeville neighborhood. |
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| | Dr. Andrew Ranson, in collaboration with colleagues, is conducting several research projects related to local jails and pretrial detention. Everyday over 700,000 individuals are incarcerated in local jails across the United States and over 60 percent of those individuals have not been convicted of the crime for which they are held. Although individuals are able to be held prior to trial if they represent a flight risk or pose a threat to public safety, the majority of individuals detained prior to trial are held due to their inability to post bond. Given that individuals detained prior to trial fair worse on several case-related outcomes (e.g., sentence length), the practice of implementing money bail produces economic inequality at multiple points in the criminal justice system. Using a national dataset, Dr. Ranson’s research reveals that a county’s racial and ethnic composition, unemployment rate, crime rate, and jail capacity impact rates of pretrial detention. | | Dr. Erin Hoekstra, in collaboration with Marquette faculty in the College of Education and the College of Health Sciences, is studying first-year students' transition to college after completing high school during the pandemic. The researchers are analyzing interview and survey data on students' experiences of learning during the pandemic, the impact of COVID-19 on themselves and their families, their expectations for their college experience, and their physical and mental health and well-being. | | STUDENT JOURNEYS THROUGH SOCS | | | Social Welfare and JusticeAsia Jackson. I graduated from Marquette in 2014 and I've had quite the path since then. After Marquette I worked as a crisis advocate at a domestic violence shelter in West Bend, then went to Sojourner Family Peace Center where I did a few years as a domestic violence/sexual assault advocate and then as the anti-human trafficking case manager. While at Sojourner I also received a Master's degree in Criminal Justice from UW-Platteville. I did some work at the intersection of disability and crime victimization at Disability Rights in Madison and currently I work as the anti-human trafficking coordinator for the Department of Children and Families. I had an interesting time at Marquette to say the least. Really, the whole SOWJ program was pivotal in retaining me at Marquette. I started as a biomedical sciences major and then communications until I found my fit in SOWJ. I know what the other majors were like and this was one of a kind. All in all, I am thankful to have had you and other SOWJ professors. |
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| | AnthropologyJohn Zeman. I am majoring in Anthropology and Cognitive Science and expect to graduate in 2023. I started as a cognitive science major, and I took a few anthropology courses to fulfill some of the requirements. After taking Human Evolutionary Process, I became hooked on the personal connection I could have with Anthropology. In that class, I was able to work hands-on with bones to look at how humans evolved. Anthropology as a whole gives students a chance to examine humans through many different lenses. Cultural anthropology lets you explore the intricacies of culture and how cultures form and change. Biological anthropology gives students the ability to apply scientific knowledge to look at how humans have evolved and how we are related to our closest living ancestors. While providing an interesting field of study for many scientific inquiries, anthropology also builds open minds. While studying anthropology, I have built respect and admiration for all cultures and ways of life. Gaining a different perspective on the world is fascinating to me, and anthropology provides me with an environment where I can do that easily. In the future, I hope to attend law school. I have learned many useful skills from anthropology, like building arguments and having an open mind, which will be valuable assets when studying law. |
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| | | Criminology and Law Studies Olivia Kiefer. I think what I’ve loved most about my time at Marquette is how I’ve become a more well-rounded student/person. The Criminology program has allowed me to try out different electives and has led me to adding on three minors. I’ve enjoyed being able to explore the various pathways the criminal justice field has to offer as well, and it has helped me discover the career options that I don’t want to pursue and the areas that peak my interest. I also think that the faculty makes a huge difference. So many of my professors have had in the field experience to share or are adjunct and provide so much more information than a textbook ever could. I wouldn’t trade my Marquette criminology degree for anything! After graduating in May 2022 I hope to work in Correctional treatment planning for adult or juvenile systems, going on to pursue a Master’s of Social Work. |
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| | Sociology: David O. Moberg Scholarship | | The David O. Moberg Scholarship is an annual award established to honor the legacy of Dr. Moberg, who taught at Marquette from 1968-1991. Guadalupe (Nayeli) Figueroa Vasquez. I graduated in December 2021 with majors in Sociology and Criminology and Law Studies. One thing I’ve valued about getting a degree in Sociology from Marquette is the professors I’ve met within the department and the skillset they helped me acquire. As a new grad, I am learning every day how my writing skills and range of perspectives, all skills learned through my major, make me a better advocate in the work I do. The professors prioritized my education and pushed me to be the best student I could be. Currently, I am working as a domestic abuse advocate at Sojourner Family Peace Center, where I was hired after my internship ended. I’d really love to continue working for a non-profit organization. I hope to work with justice impacted individuals, specifically juveniles, or in assisting Milwaukee citizens with housing needs. |
| | It is awarded to sociology majors based on academic record, leadership, university and community service, and financial need. Juwonna K. Walker. I am majoring in Sociology and Elementary Education. After graduating in June 2022, I aspire to work in a field that is committed to advocating for equity and social justice for communities that have been marginalized. I am interested in being a teacher in an urban school while engaging and uplifting the surrounding community. One thing I’ve valued about getting a degree in Sociology from Marquette is the insight and understanding that I have developed about people and social groups. |
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| | | Criminology and Law Studies: Jay Balchunas Memorial ScholarshipThe Jay Balchunas Memorial Scholarship honors Jay Balchunas, a CRLS alum who was shot and killed in the line of duty while working as an agent for Wisconsin Department of Justice. It is given to criminology and law studies students on the basis of leadership, service, and financial need. Val Tabares. I am majoring in Criminology and Law Studies and Psychology, with a minor in Computer Science. I expect to graduate in the Fall of 2022. I plan to attend law school to study criminal and/or family law with hopes to secure a place in the FBI down the road. At Marquette I value the connections I have been able to make with my fellow students and teachers. These have led me to great opportunities that deeply impact the Milwaukee community. |
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| | | Year after year, the Marquette University Department of Social and Cultural Sciences remains one of the best departments of its kind. And it’s all because of the support of parents and alumni. Private gifts are vital. They help students travel to conferences to present their research and participate in study abroad experiences. They provide paid internships, scholarships, and awards for undergraduates and assist in many other ways. No matter the size of your contribution, every gift makes a real difference to Social and Cultural Sciences students and their future. Thousands of Marquette alumni and friends answer the call to give each year. Become part of this legacy and make a gift to the Department of Social and Cultural Sciences. To make your donation, visit the Time to Rise website and scroll down to select Social and Cultural Sciences Fund in the Fund Designation box. |
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| | Copyright (C) 2022 Marquette University, Social and Cultural Sciences. All rights reserved. www.mu.edu/social-cultural-sciences/ & www.marquette.edu
The Department of Social and Cultural Sciences (SOCS) can now be found on social media! Search our handle, @MarquetteSOCS, on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook to keep up with department news and exciting opportunities. For any inquiries, please send us a DM or email us at Marquette.SOCS@gmail.com.
Our mailing address is: Lalumiere Hall 346; 1310 W. Clybourn Ave.; Milwaukee, WI 53233 Telephone: (414) 288-6838 | |
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