Faculty: Research & Teaching Interests

Melissa A. Johnson: environment, development, social construction of nature, race, environmental history, anthropological theory, Caribbean (and Latin America)

Edward L. Kain: family, demography, scholarship of teaching and learning, gender and social change, research methods

Maria R. Lowe: social movements, activism, race, gender, qualitative methods, senior research seminar

Sandi Kawecka Nenga: childhood and youth, social class, deviance, disability, qualitative methods

A Sampling of Recent Faculty Research

Johnson, Melissa A and Emily Niemeyer. 2008. "Ambivalent Landscapes: Environmental Justice in the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands." Human Ecology: An Interdisciplinary Journal 36: 371-382.

Johnson, Melissa A. 2005. "Racing Nature and Naturalizing Race: Rethinking the Nature of Creole and Garifuna Communities." Belizean Studies 27: 43-52.

Kain, Edward L. 2008. "Global Stratification" and "An Introduction to an Important Source for Basic Quantitative Sociological Data." In Sociology Through Active Learning. Edited by Kathleen McKinney and Barbara Heyl. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.

Caravello, Patti S., Edward L. Kain, Triveni Kuchi, Susan Macicak, and Gregory L. Weiss. 2008. "Information Literacy: The Partnership of Sociology Faculty and Social Science Librarians." Teaching Sociology 36:8-16.

Kain, Edward L. 2007. "Families." Pp. 107-125 in Social Problems: A Case Study Approach. Edited by Norman A. Dolch and Linda Deutschmann. Lexington Books.

Kain, Edward L, Alexandra O. Hendley ('06), Lauren R. Contreras ('06), and Krystal K. Wyatt-Baxter ('06). 2007. "Sociology in Two Year Institutions." Teaching Sociology 35:350-359.

Lowe, Maria R. 2008. “An Unseen Hand: The Role of Sociology Professor Ernst Borinski in Mississippi’s Struggle for Racial Integration in the 1950s and 1960s.” Leadership 4:27-47.

Lowe, Maria R. 2007. “An Oasis of Freedom in a Closed Society: The Significance of Tougaloo College in Mississippi’s Civil Rights Struggle, 1954 to 1965.” The Journal of Historical Sociology 20:486-520.

Lowe, Maria R. 2007. "“Sowing the Seeds of Discontent:’ Tougaloo College’s Social Science Forums as a Prefigurative Movement Free Space, 1952-1964.” Journal of Black Studies. Available on-line first here.

Lowe, Maria R. and J. Clint Morris ('01). 2007. "Civil Rights Advocates in the Academy: White Pro-integrationist Faculty at Millsaps College.”Journal of Mississippi History 67: 121-145. Theirs is the lead article in the journal and can be found at: http://www.mdah.state.ms.us/pubs/jmh.html.