MA in Critical Sociology Faculty Information

 

Associate Professor of Sociology (kbezanson@brocku.ca, Ext. 3457)

Kate Bezanson works in the areas of social and labour market policy, comparative and Canadian political economy, feminist and welfare state theory and international development. Her research centres on the dynamics of the reconfiguration of the Canadian welfare state in relation to families and family policy. Dr. Bezanson's scholarship considers the ways in which households manage changes in labour markets, family forms and social policies. Dr. Bezanson is involved in food security and local food initiatives and she has two young sons.
http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/sociology/faculty-and-staff#katebezanson

 

Associate Professor of Sociology (jbutovsky@brocku.ca, Ext. 4371)

Jonah Butovsky is affiliated with the Centre for Labour Studies at Brock University. He has written articles on the New Democratic Party and on Canadian political values. His current research is on migrant agricultural workers in Niagara and the representation of public opinion in the press.
http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/sociology/faculty-and-staff#jonahbutovsky

JANET CONWAY

Canada Research Chair in Social Justice and Associate Professor Sociology (jconway@brocku.ca, Ext. 4196)

Janet Conway teaches in the areas of social movements, feminism, and democratic theory. She is the author of Praxis and Politics: Knowledge Production in Social Movements, Routledge, 2006 and Identity, Place, Knowledge: Social Movements Contesting Globalization, Fernwood, 2004. Her work has appeared in journals in sociology, law, politics, geography and women’s studies. Her current research focuses on the World Social Forum. She completed her PhD in Political Science at York University in 2002. She holds two Master’s degrees, Political Science (2000, York) and Theology (1990 University of St. Michael’s College) and a BA (hons.) History (1984, Memorial) Before coming to Brock in 2007, she taught for five years at Ryerson University, Toronto in the Department of Politics and Public Administration. She is a long-time social justice activist in women’s and anti-poverty organizing, a founder of the Metro Network for Social Justice and founding chair of the Toronto Social Forum.

 

Graduate Program Director (Jan. 2013 - June 2015) - June Associate Professor of Sociology (ncook@brocku.ca, Ext. 3176)

Nancy Cook teaches and supervises in the areas of gender and sexuality, qualitative research methodologies, imperialism and globalization, gender relations in Pakistan, and feminist, postcolonial and poststructural theory. She has published a book and several articles on transcultural interactions between Western women development workers and local populations in northern Pakistan. Her current writing examines professional development workers who lived in Pakistan for an extended period of time to understanding how their experiences of working abroad have affected their lives back in Canada. In a new project she is studying the impacts of a newly opened road to Shimshal, northern Pakistan on women’s lives and gender relations in the village. http://edit.brocku.ca/social-sciences/graduate-programs/critical-sociology/faculty/dr-nancy-cook

 

JUNE CORMAN
Associate Dean, FSS, Undergraduate Studies, and Professor of Sociology (jcorman@brocku.ca, Ext. 4205)
June Corman is co-author (with Meg Luxton) of Getting By in Hard Times: Gendered Labour At Home and on the Job (University of Toronto Press, 2001), which received Honourable Mention for the John Porter Prize 2002. Research interests include: women and work, and social reproduction. She is author of articles on women working in the steel industry, in the education sector, and on farms. June was awarded the Graduate Mentorship Award in 2012 in recognition of excellence in graduate student supervision and mentorship.

 

LAUREN CORMAN
Assistant Professor of Sociology
(lcorman@brocku.ca, Ext. 5080)

Lauren Corman teaches in the area of Critical Animal Studies. Her intersectional research draws on feminist, anti-racist, posthumanist, and environmental approaches to the "question of the animal." Dr. Corman's dissertation focused on voice, politics, and the animal rights and liberation movements. 
http://brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/sociology/faculty-and-staff#laurencorman

ANDREA DOUCET
Canada Research Chair in Gender, Work, and Care; Professor of Sociology and Women's and Gender Studies 
(adoucet@brocku.ca, Ext. 3150)Andrea Doucet has published widely on themes of gender and care work, fatherhood, masculinities, parental leave policies, embodiment, reflexivity, and knowledge construction processes. Her book Do Men Mother? (University of Toronto Press, 2006) was awarded the John Porter Tradition of Excellence Book Award from the Canadian Sociology Association. She is also co-author of Gender Relations: Intersectionality and Beyond (with Janet Siltanen, Oxford, 2008). She is currently completing two long standing book projects - one on breadwinning mothers and caregiving dads and a second book on reflexive and relational knowing (with Natasha Mauthner); a second edition of Gender Relations is also in progress (with Siltanen). Andrea approaches her teaching and research from an eclectic interdisciplinary perspective and background; she has degrees in political theory (York), international development studies (Carleton), and a PhD in social and political sciences (Cambridge University, funded as Commonwealth Scholar). Her work on care has been deeply influenced by her parenting of three daughters while her work on knowing processes began thirty years ago when she spent nearly six years as a participatory research facilitator in water supply and sanitation projects in marginalized communities in Central and South America. She is currently working on questions of materiality, agency, embodiment, subjectivities, and relationality in knowing processes and in everyday practices of work, care, and consumption. 
http://brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/sociology/faculty-and-staff#Andrea_Doucet 

 

 ANN DUFFY

Professor of Sociology (aduffy@brocku.ca, Ext. 3517)

Professor Duffy is current publishing an interview-based book (with Professors Nancy Mandell and Sue Wilson) on mid-life women. She is also a participant in a major grant application which explores the international impact of the new economy on workers and their communities. Research interests include social inequality, paid and unpaid work and violence against women. 

 

Dean, Faculty of Social Sciences and Professor of Sociology (tdunk@brocku.ca, Ext. 3425)
Thomas Dunk’s research program is in the area of linkages between economy, culture and society, with particular focus on class, masculinity, and economic transformation. He is the author of It’s a Working Man’s Town: Male Working Class Culture; the editor of Social Relations in Resource Hinterlands; and the co-editor of The Training Trap: Ideology, Training and the Labour Market. He is currently working on two SSHRC-funded projects: “Adaptation and Resistance to the Information Age in Natural Resource Dependent Regions in Canada and Norway,” and “Hunters, Bears, Masculinity and the Politics of Identity in Ontario and France.”

 

Associate Professor of Sociology (iezeonu@brocku.ca, Ext. 4054)

Ifeanyi Ezeonu has published on the impact of neo-liberal economic policies on sub-Saharan Africa (with special focus on the IMF, the World Bank, and the WTO) and the international politics of environmental protection. Research interests include: globalization and international development, gang violence, racialised crime, social construction of crime, transnational crime, environmental crime in the Niger Delta area of Nigeria, and contemporary African Diaspora.

 

Associate Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies (margot.francis@brocku.ca, Ext. 5381)

Margot Francis is an Associate Professor in Women’s and Gender Studies, cross-appointed to the Department of Sociology. She teaches courses on queer communities and popular culture, the construction of gender and race in Canadian culture and the Introduction to Women’s and Gender Studies. Her research interests include: feminist and post-colonial perspectives on settler societies, critical explorations of culture, arts and identity and integrative approaches to gender, sexuality and the body.

Francis’ book, Creative Subversions: Whiteness and Indigeneity in the National Imaginary (UBC Press, 2011) explores how whiteness and Indigeneity are articulated through iconic images of Canadian identity - and the contradictory and contested meanings these images evoke. Juxtaposing historical images with work by contemporary artists she explores how artists are giving taken-for-granted symbols new and suggestive meanings opening up new questions about history, memory and national identity.

http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/sociology/faculty-and-staff#margotfrancis

DAN GLENDAY

Professor of Sociology (dglenday01@yahoo.com, Ext. 3456)

Professor Glenday grew up in Quebec where he received an Honors' BA from Sir George Williams University (now, Concordia University). After spending a year in Europe, he returned to Canada to continue graduate work, and received his MA from McGill University and his PhD from Carleton University. He has been awarded three Social Science and Humanities Research Council grants totaling over $180,000. His publications include "Modernization and the Canadian State", "Le domain colonial: Class Formation in a Natural Resource Enclave", "What has Work Done to the Working Class?" and most recently, "Canada, the Left and Free Trade" and "Rich but Semiperipheral". At present he has completed work with Professors Ann Duffy and Norene Pupo (York University) on another SSHRC-funded project entitled "Do Unions Make a Difference?". He and Professor Duffy have completed a manuscript published by McClelland and Stewart entitled Canadian Society: Understanding and Surviving the 1990s. He, Professors Duffy and Pupo have completed a second manuscript entitled Good Jobs, Bad Jobs, No Jobs: The Transformation of Work in the 20th Century published by Harcourt, Brace and Company and is completing Plugged in at the Office: The Impact of Gender, Culture and Technological Change in Clerical Workers' Lives to be published by Oxford University Press. His research interests include the sociology of work, comparative methods in social analysis, and the Canadian political economy in the modern world-system (The Work of Immanuel Wallerstein).

http://edit.brocku.ca/social-sciences/graduate-programs/critical-sociology/faculty/dr-daniel-glenday
 

Associate Professor of Sociology (kgosine@brocku.ca, Ext. 4412)

Kevin Gosine's primary areas of research interest include the critical study of ethnicity and racialization, social identity construction, social inequality, the sociology of education, and cultural studies. Recent published work has explored processes of multiple identity construction and cultural negotiation among highly educated and upwardly mobile Black Canadians. In collaboration with Dr. Gordon Pon of Ryerson University, he has also published work that examines racial bias and disproportionality within Ontario’s child welfare system. Alongside his ongoing collaborative work on child welfare, Dr. Gosine is currently studying academically at-risk youth in Toronto's Regent Park who participate in the Pathways to Education Program (the latter project is supported by a Public Health Agency of Canada research grant which Dr. Gosine holds in partnership with Pathways to Education Canada).

 

Professor of Sociology (jhelleiner@brocku.ca, Ext. 3711)

Jane Helleiner was trained in social/cultural anthropology at the University of Toronto.  She has conducted research in Ireland and Canada. Her current research examines differentiated local experience of a changing, stratified Canada/US border. Areas of graduate supervision include critical border studies, racism/antiracism, gender and sexuality, childhood and youth. Dr. Helleiner is on the editorial board for the journal Studies in Social Justice.

Associate Professor of Sociology and Women's Studies (aisla@brocku.ca, Ext. 3466)

Ana Isla conducts research on women, underdevelopment and environmental issues. Research interests include: development and underdevelopment, feminism, environmentalism. http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/sociology/faculty-and-staff#anaisla

 

Associate Professor of Sociology (tkitossa@brocku.ca, Ext. 5672)

Tamari Kitossa's areas of course instruction inclusive of: critical perspectives on the criminal legal system; sociology of law, punishment, and society; and counter-colonial approach to criminological theory. Research interests include: counter-colonialtheorizing of racial profiling; Marxian approaches to police, the state and repression; the environment; and sexual racism and

hypersexualism of African males. Immediate research projects include: a qualitative and quantitative examination of race and representation in Canadian criminology; mainstream criminological discourse as 'bad faith' toward blackness and epistemic violence; and, with Dr. Katerina Deliovsky is developing the theory of 'repressive tolerance' toward interracial couples. Dr. Kitossa is working on an edited collection entitled: Protest, Repression and the Police State: Critical Studies of Policing, the State and Society, 1960 -1990. He is Co-Chair of the Brock/Niagara African Canadian Renaissance Group http://brockniagaraafricangroup.weebly.com/). Through the Brock/Niagara African Renaissance Group he is co-developer of the Dr. Wilma Morrison Annual African Heritage Lecture (https://www.brocktv.ca/watch/1100). He is Secretary to the Black Canadian Studies Association (http://bcsa.wordpress.com/the-bcsa/); and, with Richard Richard Ndayizigamiye, is drafting a proposal for an Africana Chair in Borders, Migration and Settlement Studies at Brock

University.

MURRAY KNUTTILA
Provost and Vice-President Academic, 
Professor of Sociology
(mknuttila@brocku.ca,ext. 4121)
Murray Knuttila is Provost and Vice-President Academic at Brock University where he also holds an appointment as Professor of Sociology. Prior to joining Brock in 2009 he taught in the Department of Sociology and Social Studies at the University of Regina for several decades where he was also a Research Faculty at the Saskatchewan Population Health Evaluation Research Unit. He was Associate Vice-President (Academic) for two years, Dean of Arts from 1995 to 2002 and Assistant Dean and Department Head prior to that. He was the inaugural Chairperson of the Regina-Qu’Appelle Regional Health Authority and Vice-Chair of the Saskatchewan Health Research Foundation Board. He has been on numerous graduate committees and supervised numerous M.A. and PhDs students as well as being the recipient of numerous research grants.

He was born and raised on a farm in Saskatchewan.He received a BA (Honours) and MA from the University of Regina and his Ph.D. from the University of Toronto. He has written papers, articles and book chapters on issues such as the role of the state in Western Canadian society, globalization and Canadian agricultural policy, rural Saskatchewan and men and masculinities. His current research interests include the impact of globalization on social development and politics in rural Canada, as well as issues relating to men and masculinities, social justice and population health.

 

In addition to various edited books, book chapters and articles, his books include: 1) Sociology Revisited; 2) That Man Partridge: The Life and Times of E.A. Partridge; 3) Introducing Sociology: A Critical Perspective; and 4) State Theories: Classical, Feminist and Global Perspectives. http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/sociology/faculty-and-staff#murrayknuttila

HIJIN PARK
Assistant Professor of Sociology (hijinpark@brocku.ca, ext. 3540)
Hijin Park works in the area of anti-racist feminism. Her research and teaching interests include feminist criminology, refugee and migration studies, and securitization studies. She has published articles and book chapters on violence against racialized women, the criminalization of migration, and Canadian white settler nationalism.
http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/sociology/faculty-and-staff#hijinpark
 

MARY-BETH RADDON
Associate Professor of Sociology (mraddon@brocku.ca, Ext. 3460)
Mary-Beth Raddon researches the sociology of money, and the intersections of non-market and market economies. Critical analysis of "the gift" is a core theme that ties together work on philanthropy, charitable giving and volunteering, inheritance, unpaid service and caring work. She has a longstanding interest in community currencies: initiatives to create parallel local money systems that seek to generate meaningful work and convivial, sustainable, democratic and sovereign local economies. Her book, Community and Money: Men and Women Making Change (Black Rose, 2003), shows how experimentation with new exchange networks exposes problems and injustices of everyday economic life, including gendered patterns of reciprocity, exchange, work and shopping, identification of which helps point the way to new economic politics. Professor Raddon teaches courses in research design, qualitative methods, service-learning, and anti-poverty strategies.

Professor of Sociology (msmith@brocku.ca, Ext. 4370)

Murray Smith researches and publishes in the areas of social and political theory, labour studies, the sociology of medicine, and Marxist political economy. He is the author of Global Capitalism in Crisis: Karl Marx and the Decay of the Profit System (Fernwood, 2010), Invisible Leviathan: The Marxist Critique of Market Despotism beyond Postmodernism (University of Toronto Press, 1994) and the editor of Early Modern Social Theory: Selected Interpretive Readings (Canadian Scholars Press, 1998). He is also the co-author (with Judith Blackwell and John Sorenson) of Culture of Prejudice: Arguments in Critical Social Science (Broadview Press, 2003; now published by University of Toronto Press). Dr. Smith has recently completed a book manuscript on critical-dialectical methodology and published several articles and book chapters concerned with Marxist crisis theory, socialist strategy and organized labour.

http://edit.brocku.ca/social-sciences/graduate-programs/critical-sociology/faculty/dr-murray-smith
 

Professor of Sociology (jsorenson@brocku.ca, Ext. 4369)

John Sorenson gives courses on nonhuman animals and human society, racism, and corporate globalization. Much of his past research has been on war, nationalism and refugees and he has been active in solidarity groups in Africa, Asia, Central America and the Middle East. He was also actively engaged in humanitarian relief work in the Horn of Africa with the Eritrean Relief Association. His most recent book is Animal Rights (Fernwood Press). Other books include Ape; Culture of Prejudice: Arguments in Critical Social Science; Ghosts and Shadows: Construction of Identity and Community in an African Diaspora; Imagining Ethiopia: Struggles for History and Identity in the Horn of Africa; Disaster and Development in the Horn of Africa; and African Refugees. His recent SSHRC-funded research has been on the representation of nonhuman animals.

http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/graduate-programs/critical-sociology/faculty/dr-john-sorenson

DENNIS SORON

Associate Professor of Sociology (dsoron@brocku.ca, Ext. 3458)

Dennis Soron's teaching and research interests include social and cultural theory, the political economy of consumption, radical ecology, and the intersection of labour and environmental politics. He has published various book chapters, articles, and interviews on consumerism, work, the environment, and the issue of depoliticization. He is (with Gordon Laxer) the co-editor of Not For Sale: Decommodifying Public Life (Broadview/Garamond, 2006).
http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/sociology/faculty-and-staff#dennissoron

 

Graduate Program Director (September - December, 2012), Associate Professor of Sociology (mwebber@brocku.ca, Ext. 4411)

Michelle Webber publishes in the area of higher education and gender. Her research interests include higher education, teacher education and feminist research. She is Principal Investigator on a SSHRC grant (with Sandra Acker, University of Toronto, Co-Investigator) titled “The New Scholarly Subject: Academic Work, Subjectivities and Accountability Governance.” She is also a Co-Investigator on an SSHRC funded project (with Larry Savage, Principal Investigator, and Jonah Butovsky, Co-Investigator) titled “Faculty Associations and The Politics of Accountability Governance in Ontario Universities.”
http://www.brocku.ca/social-sciences/undergraduate-programs/sociology/faculty-and-staff#michellewebber