Faculty and Staff
Sociology and Anthropology
- Phone: (507) 222-4108
Faculty
Chair of Sociology and Anthropology
Jerome Levi (anthropology) (M.Phil. Cambridge, Ph.D. Harvard) is interested in the ethnography of the Greater Southwest and Mesoamerica. In Mexico, he has conducted research among the Tarahumara (Rarámuri) of Chihuahua, and the Tzotzil of Chiapas. In the U.S., he has worked with indigenous peoples of southern California and on the Hopi-Navaho land dispute. His current research focuses on the politics of identity, symbolism, and interethnic relations in the Sierra Tarahumara of northwest Mexico. Jay teaches courses on the comparative history of native peoples and the state in Mexico, Canada, and the U.S.; ethnicity, gender, and exchange in Latin America; and anthropological approaches to the study of religion, economics, and indigenous rights.
Peter Brandon received his Ph.D. at the University of Chicago. Prior to coming to Carleton College, he was Professor of Demography and Sociology at The Australian National University. He has held previous research and teaching positions at the University of Massachusetts, Brown University, and the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His research interests include poverty and inequality, the American Welfare State, social program evaluation, quantitative methods, and measuring family and child well-being. He teaches courses on the American Welfare State, demographic methods, quantitative social science research methods, demography of the family, and disability and society.
Van Dusenbery, Visiting Professor of Anthropology (University of Chicago, PhD), has conducted research among Sikhs in the USA, Canada, Indonesia, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, and India. His recent work has focused on Sikh diaspora philanthropy. He teaches courses on anthropological theory, anthropology and globalization, global diasporas, and the anthropology of religion and politics.
Adjunct Instructor in Sociology
Adrienne Falcón, a Visiting Lecturer (University of Chicago, ABD), focuses on urban sociology, sociology of youth and community organizations, environmental sociology and ethnography of Latin America. She has conducted research on a diverse immigrant community in Chicago and on youth and education in Cuba and Ecuador. Her current work focuses on questions of power and social change through community organizing. She teaches courses in introductory sociology, urban sociology and ethnography of Latin America.
Pamela Feldman-Savelsberg (anthropology) received her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1990. She has been working on reproductive health care issues in Cameroon since 1980, first as a Peace Corps volunteer and later as an anthropological researcher. Pamela's first research, on women's fear of infertility among the rural Bamiléké of Cameroon, addresses the ways female poverty and the state-ethnic relations are inscribed in women's views of their bodies. She is currently working among the urban Bamiléké, studying the role of women's voluntary associations in reproductive decision-making. In addition to introductory anthropology, she teaches courses on gender, Africa, health and illness, and the relationship between human and social reproduction.
Annette Nierobisz graduated from the Ph.D. program in Sociology at the University of Toronto in 2001. Annette's research interests are in the areas of the sociology of law, work and occupations, human rights, and gender. Her most recent research project examines the development of sexual orientation rights in Canada. She has also conducted research on how Canadian judges responded to workplace wrongful dismissals that occurred with the transition to a globally interconnected economy, and she has examined female law professors experiences with authority challenges from students. Annette teaches introductory sociology, research methods, the sociology of law, the sociology of work and occupations and criminology.
Nader Saiedi (sociology) has a Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1983 and has taught at Wisconsin, UCLA, University of Virginia, and Vanderbilt. Born in Iran, Nader brings a global perspective and a Middle East background to the department. He is strongly interested in social theory and social philosophy. Nader is also engaged in Baha'i study and advises the department of Integrative Study of Religion in Landegg Academy, Switzerland. In addition to introductory sociology, he teaches courses in classical and contemporary social theory, social stratification, sociology of religion, and the Middle East.
Director of South Asian Studies
Meera Sehgal Meera Sehgal is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Women’s and Gender studies. She was educated in India and the United States, receiving her Ph. D in sociology from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2004. She is currently working on a book manuscript titled, Citizen-warriors and militant mothers: Women in the Hindu nationalist movement in India. Based on extensive field research supported by a MacArthur Foundation fellowship, her book focuses on the mobilization and participation of women in the right wing Hindu nationalist movement in north India. She emphasizes a transnational feminist perspective in her teachings and travels regularly to India for research and familial purposes. She teaches courses on South Asia, social movements, qualitative methods, transnational feminist theory, feminist approaches to research and women's health in the U.S.
Director of Archaeology
A.B. Stanford University; M.A., Ph.D. University of Minnesota. Special interest in archaeology. Co-coordinator of the Archaeology Concentration. Began teaching at Carleton in 1974.
Jim Fisher (anthropology) received his Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Chicago. His real interest is South Asia, and he has done fieldwork in Nepal off and on over the last 30 years - on economics and ecology among Magars (in a village two weeks walk from the nearest road), on education and tourism among Sherpas near Mount Everest, and more recently on a person-centered ethnography of a Brahmin human rights activist. As a visiting Fulbright Professor, he spent two years helping start a new Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Tribhuvan University. In addition to introductory courses, Jim teaches on South Asia, anthropological theory, and biography and ethnography.
Emeritus Professor
Staff
Winifred and Atherton Bean Professor of Sociology, Science, Technology, and Society
Beverly Nagel (sociology) received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Stanford University. Her research interests concern rural development, grassroots action, and social change in Latin America. For the past twelve years, she has been engaged in research on agricultural development, ethnic relations, and social movements on Paraguay's eastern frontier. She has also conducted research on rural development and migration patterns in Mexico, and has served as a consultant on both urban and rural development projects for the Inter-American Development Bank and the Fundación Intermon. In addition to introductory sociology, she teaches courses on social research methods, Third World development, population, social movements, and the ethnography of Latin America.