Spring 2010 Newsletter

Faculty News

Professor Myra Bluebond-Langner, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, will be taking a five-year leave from the department to accept an appointment as Professor and True Colours Chair in Palliative Care for Children and Young People at the University College London’s Institute of Child Health and Great Ormond Street Hospital. This is the first research chair in pediatric palliative care in the world. Professor Bluebond-Langner will encourage and foster the development of excellence in children’s palliative care throughout the UK and seek to influence national and international services and policy. Professor Bluebond-Langner will continue to serve as editor of the Rutgers University Press Series in Childhood Studies while she is abroad.

Professor Bluebond-Langner’s research career has focused on childhood illness, both chronic and terminal. Her accomplishments in medical anthropology, childhood studies and bioethics have had considerable impact within various academic disciplines as well as in the practice of medicine and research with children and have been recognized both here and abroad. Her latest recognition was from the University of Illinois, her graduate school alma mater, which conferred upon her the University of Illinois College of Arts and Sciences Achievement Award. She was also named distinguished alum of the University of Illinois Department of Anthropology.

Professor Bluebond-Langner has been a valued member of the department, serving as chair for several years and as an active participant in all of the department’s activities throughout her tenure here. She will be missed while she is gone, but we look forward to her return in 2015 and wish her much success as she takes on the challenge of establishing a new program in palliative care in London. 

Although the department will be temporarily losing one faculty member, we will be gaining another. Joan Maya Mazelis is joining the department as an Assistant Professor of Sociology. Professor Mazelis received her B.A. from Binghamton University, and earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Pennsylvania, with a graduate certificate in urban studies. Before coming to Rutgers-Camden, Dr. Mazelis was an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Yeshiva University in New York City, and also taught at Temple University and the University of Pennsylvania. Her areas of specialty are urban sociology and social stratification; her research and teaching interests are in urban poverty and inequality, social policy, race and ethnicity, identity, reciprocity, social capital, stigma, qualitative methods, and the daily lives of low-income families. She considers how ideas about poverty change over time and space and how those ideas affect poor people. She will be teaching Introduction to Sociology, Sociological Theory, Urban Sociology, and Social Stratification. We are delighted to welcome Professor Mazelis to the department.

For those wondering what will happen to the courses Professor Bluebond-Langner customarily teaches, we are happy to announce that Cindy Dell Clark will be joining the department as a Visiting Associate Professor of Anthropology for the next two years. In that position, she will offer many of the courses Professor Bluebond-Langner has taught, including Childhood and Culture and Child Health and Illness this fall.  Dr Clark has over 25 years experience doing qualitative research with children, both as an applied researcher and in scholarly work. She holds an M.A. and Ph.D. in Human Development from the University of Chicago, as well as a B.A. in International Relations from the University of Pennsylvania. During the past decade, she was a faculty member in Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State Brandywine, where she taught courses touching on children, families and culture. Dr. Clark conducts research that privileges the vantage points of children.  Adding to her three prior books and many chapters and articles, Oxford University Press will soon publish her fourth book, a methodological guidebook, “In A Younger Voice:  Doing Child-centered Qualitative Research.” 

Dr. Jane Siegel chaired a panel and presented a paper entitled “Child Maltreatment and Delinquency in an At-Risk Population of Youth” at the American Society of Criminology conference in Philadelphia. She also delivered a lecture about children of incarcerated mothers to a group of criminal court judges in Philadelphia as part of a presentation about women in the criminal justice system entitled “Standing at the Bar of Court, Your Honor, is Ms. ______________.”

Dr. Drew Humphries presented three papers at the 2009 annual meetings of the American Society of Criminology held in Philadelphia. Her research paper “Constructing Gender: Masculinity/Femininity in Law and Order” focused on NBC’s long-running crime drama. Dr. Humphries was also an invited discussant for an author meets critic session that offered scholars reactions Walter Dekeseredy’s book, “Dangerous Exits: Escaping Relationships in Rural America.” As an active member of the Division on Women and Crime, Dr. Humphries discussed “how to survive the tenure years” in a workshop designed for young scholars who are faced with negotiating their careers from point of being hire to tenure.

Dr. Michelle Meloy traveled to Philadelphia to present a paper at the annual American Society of Criminology conference. The talk was titled “The More is More Approach to Sex Offender Legislation.” The research involved undergraduate students Ben Zieman, Jessica Boatwright, and Kristen Foy.

Dr. Cati Coe presented the following papers at four different conferences here and in Europe:

• “Educating across Borders: How Transnational Ghanaian Migrants Compare Educational Systems,” at the Comparative and International Education Society conference in Chicago. She also served as a discussant for “Representing the Past and Determining the Future: Issues in Heritage and Citizenship Education” at the conference.  

• “What is the Impact of Transnational Migration on Mothers who Stay? A Comparison with Internal Migrants in a Small Town in Ghana,” at the American Anthropological Association meetings in Philadelphia.

• “Growing Up to Care for Another: Reciprocities between Children and the Elderly in Southern Ghana,” at the New Orleans conference of the African Studies Association. 

• “Social Class, Family Ideology, and the Separation of Siblings in Ghanaian Transnational Families,” which was an invited paper for a conference on Brother- and Sisterhood in Bayreuth, Germany.

Between all her conferences, Dr. Coe managed to revise a book manuscript titled “Everyday Ruptures: Children, Youth, and Migration in Global Perspective, which she is co-editing with Rachel R. Reynolds, Deborah A. Boehm, Julia Meredith Hess, and Heather Rae-Espinoza.  The book is scheduled to be published by Vanderbilt University Press.

Dr. Sheila Cosminsky presented a paper titled “Midwives and Reproductive Risk: A Case Study from Guatemala,” in a session on Responsibility and Blame: Social and Biomedical Constructions of Reproductive Risk, at the 50th Anniversary meeting of the Society for Medical Anthropology, Yale University. She also delivered a paper with Diane Markowitz titled “Child Obesity, Cultural Models of Diabetes, Dietary Change and Risk in Children of Hispanic Migrant Workers in Southern New Jersey,” in a session on Critical Anthropological Perspectives on Obesity, at the American Anthropological Association conference in Philadelphia.

Dr. Gail Caputo presented research from her book “Out in the Storm: Drug-Addicted Women Living as Shoplifters and Sex Workers” in an author meets critic session at the American Society of Criminology conference in Philadelphia.

Kevin Murphy was an invited speaker on “Interviewing Reluctant Witnesses” at the National Defenders Investigators Association in Las Vegas.

Andre Zanetic, who spent a semester with our department as a visiting scholar has completed a new book. “The Question of Public Security,” has just been released by Livraria Cultura, a leading Brazilian publisher. Much of it was written while he was a visiting scholar in our department. The publisher describes it as “a significant contribution about the way security is organized in Brazil, with a focus on how to regulate private security services.”

Summer Courses

The department is offering more than 19 courses this summer. Here is a sample of those offerings for undergraduate and graduate students. For all summer offerings, visit Rutgers-Camden Summer Session.

For Undergraduates

For Graduate Students

Notes about Fall Courses

Registration for fall 2010 classes is underway. Click here for the complete schedule of courses. The department will be offering two new special topics undergraduate courses this fall, both taught by instructors with extensive criminal justice system experience:

Graduate Program in Criminal justice

Urban Research Series

Masterton Awardees 2010

Congratulations to Dana Simone (left) and Ben Zieman (center) who have been chosen to receive the 2010 Masterton Awards in Criminal Justice and to LindaZekovitch (right) chosen to receive the Masterton Award in Sociology and Anthropology. Named after the department’s first chair, the George Masterton Award is given annually to graduating seniors for outstanding academic achievement, significant contributions to the department and campus, and for intellectual promise. The awards will be presented at the Honors Convocation in May.

Dana Simone is a criminal justice major. During her undergraduate career at Rutgers University, Dana has worked as a research and teaching assistant for Dr. Jane Siegel, and has also aided in the defense of juveniles as an investigator for the Rutgers Law School Children’s Justice Clinic. In addition, she was also awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research Grant during the summer of 2009. This grant allowed her to examine a community-based alternative to incarceration called New Directions for Women. This research compared successful and unsuccessful program participants to uncover key factors that predict successful completion. She will be pursuing her Master’s Degree at Rutgers Camden in the fall and hopes to achieve her PhD in Criminology.

Ben Zieman is a criminal justice major and psychology minor. He has already started to apply his classroom experiences to real life with his internship at the Federal Public Defender’s Office in Camden, his volunteer work with the Rutgers Law School Domestic Violence Project, and his investigation work that aids in the defense of juveniles represented by the Rutgers Law School Children’s Justice Clinic. Ben will be attending the Rutgers Camden School of Law beginning this fall. He is also an avid guitar player whose biggest inspirations include Slash, Van Halen, and Kirk Hammett. 

Linda Zekovitch completed a student-designed major in Sociocultural anthropology major. She is also a McNair Scholar and MAC Undergraduate Research Fellow. She has worked as a research assistant and teaching assistant for Dr. Sheila Cosminsky. She plans to pursue her doctoral studies in Medical Anthropology and Global Health in the future and will begin her graduate studies in NY this summer. She will continue collaborating with Dr. Cosminsky on research dealing with dietary patterns and ethnic identity.

In Memoriam