Sociology Faculty

Bernhard · Brents · Carns · Dickens · Fontana · Futrell
Gottschalk · Hausbeck · Keene · Kent · Ketchell · PAGE 2

Bo J. Bernhard is an honors graduate of Harvard University, where he double majored in sociology and psychology. His final undergraduate thesis (on the social impacts of gambling in Las Vegas) received magna cum laude honors from both departments. This thesis led him to the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV), where he received his Ph.D. in sociology in 2002. A frequent lecturer on the impacts of the gaming industry in communities around the world, he has delivered over four dozen keynote addresses on six continents. In addition, he has conducted gaming policy advisory work in Brazil, Singapore, South Korea, Russia, South Africa, Australia, Canada, and a number of U.S. jurisdictions. Dr. Bernhard currently holds professorships in UNLV’s departments of sociology and hotel management, and serves as Director of Gambling Research at the university’s International Gaming Institute.

In 2002, Dr. Bernhard’s research and teaching accomplishments earned him the inaugural Shannon Bybee Award from the Nevada and National Councils on Problem Gambling. This award was created to recognize outstanding contributions to the field of problem gambling. He serves on the Executive Board of the Nevada Council on Problem Gambling, and on the national board of directors for the National Council on Problem Gambling. He is a founding board member of The Problem Gambling Center, the Las Vegas area’s primary treatment and research service organization. Most recently, he was invited to serve on a newly-created advisory board for the National Center for Responsible Gaming, based at the Division on Addictions at Harvard Medical School. The latter organization has also awarded Dr. Bernhard an adjunct research professorship to support his research on problem gambling prevention. In Southern Nevada, his work has been recognized by Nathan Adelson Hospice, which gave him a "Heart Award" for community service, and the Las Vegas Chamber of Commerce, which gave him an "Excellence Award" for his community contributions. In 2006, he was named "International Educator of the Year" by the World Affairs Council, an international organization that promotes critical discussion of global affairs.

Dr. Bernhard's publications have emphasized an evaluation of gambling’s social costs and benefits from a perspective that blends macro insights from sociology with the micro and clinical applications of psychology. His peer-reviewed work has been published in prestigious cross-disciplinary journals such as The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science and American Behavioral Scientist. Most recently, he was asked to co-edit a special volume of American Behavioral Scientist that will focus on sociological and community perspectives on pathological gambling. He currently serves as a principal or co-principal investigator for nearly $500,000 in research grant projects examining the impacts of gambling in society, and actively seeks projects that fund graduate and undergraduate research. His studies have been prominently featured in local and national media coverage, and have been highlighted in nationally televised programs on CNN, CNNfn, CNN Headline News, The Discovery Health Channel, Telemundo, PBS, NPR, and The History Channel.

A fifth-generation Las Vegan, Dr. Bernhard is currently at work on a book entitled Vice Capades, a historical and sociological perspective on those who gamble to excess.

bo.bernhard@ccmail.nevada.edu

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Barb Brents is currently involved in research on the sex industry in Nevada and has co-founded the S.A.B.I.R. (Sex and Body Industry Research) Project with Prof. Kate Hausbeck. Their publications on the sex industry include, "Violence and Legalized Brothel Prostitution in Nevada," in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence 20(3):270-295, 2005, "State Sanctioned Sex: Negotiating Formal and Informal Regulations in Nevada Brothels," in Sociological Perspectives, 44(3):307-331, 2001 and "Inside Nevada's Brothel System," pp. 217-243 in Ron Weitzer, ed., Sex for Sale: Prostitution, Pornography, and the Sex Industry,(Routledge, 1999). The two are also co-authoring a book, The State of Sex: The Nevada Brothel Industry, with Routledge. Barb's main research interests are in culture, power, politics and inequality, and in the development of policy at all levels, in all its alternative forms. She has recently published several articles on the intersections of social movements, terrorism, and violence, including work with several students and former students on skinheads, racial and ethnic movements in Zanzibar, and with Prof. Robert Futrell on anti-nuclear protests. She has been involved in research on the development of social policy during the U.S. New Deal (in American Sociological Review and Critical Sociology), academia and the production of knowledge (in The American Sociologist and Social Science and Medicine), and autoethnographic writing as an alternative to traditional academic writing (in Journal of Contemporary Ethnography). She believes sociology's main job is to use research and teaching to fight social injustice. She teaches classes in sexuality, political sociology, and gender. She works with the Women's Studies program, Ethics and Policy studies program, the Honors Program. And she works to bring alternative ideas into politics locally. She served as president of the Nevada ACLU and as a National Board member, was the founding secretary of the Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada, a board member of Citizen Alert, and has been active in the Las Vegas' peace, labor, and environmental movements.

Joined faculty in 1987.

brents@unlv.nevada.edu

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carns@unlv.nevada.edu

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Recent publications include:

· 2002 Dickens, David R. "Time and Postmodernism" Symbolic Interaction, 24(3):398-396
· 2000 Dickens, David R. "Attitudes and Platitudes: Postmodernism and Interactionist Thought." Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 23:71-82.
· 1999 Dickens, David R. (with Mark Gottdiener and Claudia C. Collins). Las Vegas: The Social Production of an All-American City. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
· 1997 Dickens, David R. and Andrea Fontana. "On Nostalgic Reconstruction in Interactionist Thought." Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 20: 181-192.
· 1996 Dickens, David R. and John Harms. Postmodern Media Studies: Analysis or Symptom Critical Studies in Mass Communication 13(3).
· 1996 Dickens, David R., "Postmodernism, Cultural Studies, and Contemporary Social Inquiry." Cultural Studies: A Research Annual Volume 1:27-35.
· 1995 Dickens, David R. The Ethical Horizons of Postmodernity. Symbolic Interaction 18,2:535-542.
· 1995 Dickens, David R. "Whither Ethnography" (Review Essay). Symbolic Interaction 18,4:207-216.
· 1994 Dickens, David R. "Cultural Studies in Sociology" (Review Essay). Symbolic Interaction 17,2:99-105.
· 1994 Dickens, David R. and Andrea Fontana (eds.). Postmodernism and Social Inquiry. New York and London: Guilford Press and University College London Press.

Joined faculty in 1984.

dickens@unlv.nevada.edu

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Andrea Fontana is Professor of Sociology and department chair at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California, San Diego. He has published articles on aging, leisure, theory, and postmodernism. He is the author of the Last Frontier: the Social Meaning of Growing Old, co-author of Social Problems and Sociologies of Everyday Life, and coeditor of The Existential Self in Society and Postmodernism and Social Inquiry. He is a former president of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction and a former editor of the journal Symbolic Interaction. Among Fontanas last published essays are a deconstruction of the work of the painter Hieronymus Bosch, a performance/play about Farinelli, the castrato, an ethnographic narrative about land speed records at the Bonneville Salt Flats, and a performance based on "Six Feet Under." Fontana is completing a monograph with Ana Prokos on interviewing with Left Coast Press and working on a text on death and dying for Polity Press.

Joined faculty in 1976.

andrea.fontana@unlv.edu

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Robert Futrell specializes in the areas of social movements, environmental sociology, sociology of science and technological disputes, and political sociology. He is currently a co-principal investigator for the Nevada Test Site Oral History Project (with Dr. Andy Kirk [History] and Dr. Mary Palevsky [History]), an $830,000 federally-funded project documenting the experiences of people affiliated with the Nevada Test Site, the continental site for the U.S. nuclear testing program. Dr. Futrell's other research includes a series of articles on recent transformations in the U.S. white power movement with Dr. Pete Simi (Univ. Nebraska-Omaha), writings on the political and scientific controversy surrounding the U.S. Army's Chemical Weapons Disposal Program, and mapping the limits to sustainable development in the southwestern United States. His most recent publications are "Understanding Music in Movements" (with Pete Simi and Simon Gottschalk) in The Sociological Quarterly (2006), "White Power Cyberculture." (with Pete Simi) in a special issue on white supremacy in Journal of Political and Military Sociology (forthcoming 2006), "Free Spaces, Collective Identity, and the Persistence of U.S. White Power Activism" in Social Problems (2004), "Framing Processes, Cognitive Liberation, and NIMBY Protest in the U.S. Chemical Weapons Disposal Conflict" in Sociological Inquiry (2003), "Technical Adversarialism and Participatory Collaboration in the U.S. Chemical Weapons Disposal Program" in Science, Technology, and Human Values (2003), and "The Expendable City: Las Vegas and the Limits of Sustainability" in Humboldt Journal of Social Relations (2001). Other publications can be found in International Journal of Politics, Culture & Society, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, American Behavioral Scientist, Qualitative Sociology, and Social Thought & Research. Dr. Futrell teaches undergraduate, honors, and graduate level courses in Principles of Sociology, Environmental Sociology, Social Movements, Social Change, and Sociology of Sport. He has received several awards for teaching, most recently the 2005-2006 UNLV Foundation Distinguished Teaching Award. He is also the Director of Undergraduate Studies in Sociology and supervises the UNLV Sociology Internship Program.

Joined faculty in 1999.

rfutrell@unlv.nevada.edu

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While still editor of Symbolic Interaction. Simon Gottschalk is working on several projects. These include: developing a new class in Ecological Social Psychology that will develop an ecological approach to social psychological and social psychiatric issues, and examine the contributions of ecological approaches to sociological thinking. He is also carrying research on the social and psychological effects of new mass media technologies, and on terrorism.

Last spring, he presented two papers at professional conventions: Fatal Acceleration: A Postmodern Analysis of Web Commercial” (at the Pacific Sociological Association in Hollywood), and The Chemical Self: Serotonin, Cyberspace and Symbolic Interaction (at the Stone Symposium in Athens, Georgia). Dr. Gottschalk continues to be regularly interviewed by the Las Vegas Sun and other local papers on sociological issues. His most recent publications include:

Recent publications include:

· "Prozac, Postmodernism and Politics" pp. 61-84 in Psychotropic Drugs and Popular Culture: Essays on Medicine, Mental Health and the Media. Editted by Lawrence Rubin. McFarland Publishers. 2006.
· "Understanding Music in Movements: The White Power Movement Music Scene" (with Robert Futrell and Pete Simi). The Sociological Quarterly Vol 47 (2):275-304. 2005.
· "Mental Health Care in Nevada" (with Kathryn Landreth). In The Social Health of Nevada: Leading Indictors and Quality of Life in the Silver State. (Edited by D. Shalin) Electronic publication by UNLV Center for Democratic Culture.
· "Authoritarianism and Pathological Hatred: A Social-Psychological Profile of the Middle-Eastern Terrorist." (with Michel Gottschalk). The American Sociologist. Vol 35(2): 38-59. 2004.
· "Reli(e)ving the Past: Emotion Work in the Second Generation." Symbolic Interaction. Vol 26(3): 355-380. 2003.
· "The Greening of Identity: Three Environmental Paths." Studies in Symbolic Interaction, Volume 24 (Fall 2000).
· "Escape from Insanity." Pp. 18-48 in Pathology and the Postmodern: Mental Illness as Discourse and Experience. Edited by Dwight Fee. London: Sage (2000).
· "Speed Culture: Fast Strategies in TV Commercials." Qualitative Sociology, Volume 22 (4):311-329. 1999.
· "The Pains of Everyday Life: Between the D.S.M. and the Postmodern." Studies in Symbolic Interaction Vol. 21: 115-146. 1997.

Joined faculty in 1992.

karma@unlv.nevada.edu

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Kate Hausbeck is a co-founder of the Sex and Body Industry Research Project (The SABIR Project) with friend, colleague and co-author, Barb Brents. In the course of this research, Kate and Barb have studied the organization and expansion of the sex industry in the United States and documented what has been called 'the pornographication of everyday life.' Specifically, they have focused on the structure, organization and culture of the sex industry in Las Vegas (so-called sin-city and the symbolic center of the American sex industry) and on America's only system of legalized prostitution: the Nevada brothels. Currently, Hausbeck and Brents are finishing a co-authored book, The State of Sex: The Nevada Brothel Industry, with Routledge Publishers. Examples of other SABIR publications include a chapter in Ron Weitzer, ed, Sex For Sale: Prostitution, Pornography and the Sex Industry, an article on the "McDonaldization of Sex," and an article in Sociological Perspectives titled, "State Sanctioned Sex: Negotiating Formal and Informal Regulations in Nevada Brothels." In addition to ongoing SABIR publications, Kate is currently writing two other articles, "The Body Industry, or The Sexual Logic of Late Capitalism," and "(Re)Conceptualizing 'Trafficking': Clarifying the Role of Discourse in Policy and Practice." A version of the latter article (co-authored with Teri Pfeiffer, UNLV SOC Ph.D. student) was presented at "The Human Rights Challenge of Globalization in Asia-Pacific-USA: The Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children" Conference co-sponsored by the Globalization Research Center and the East-West Center in November, 2002. In the summer of 2002, Kate spent two months in China where she taught a course on "Women and Gender in Chinese Culture" through the USAC Program and Sichuan University, and she began laying the groundwork for future research on the evolution of gender, sexuality and the body industry in China's transitional market economy.

In addition to research, Kate is a dedicated teacher and mentor as well as the Graduate Coordinator; she teaches classical and contemporary theory courses, Gender, SOC 101, ProSeminar, Teaching Sociology, Sociology of the Sex Industry, Cultural Studies, Gender & Culture in China, and is developing a new course on Visual Sociology & Media Culture. In 1999, Kate received the UNLV Distinguished Teacher Award and was the UNLV nominee for the State of Nevada Regents Teaching Award. Kate serves on numerous committees in the College of Liberal Arts, the Graduate College and across the University; she is also affiliated with the Women's Studies Department where she sits on the Steering Committee, the Asian Studies Program, and she was a founding member of the Cultural Studies Program. For Kate, scholarly work is intertwined with public education, progressive politics and activism. She is on the Board of the American Civil Liberties Union of Nevada where she is Development Director, and she participates in a wide range of progressive causes, including peace activism, advocacy for street children, GLBT/queer politics, international human rights and anti-slavery initiatives.

Joined faculty in 1995.

hausbeck@unlv.nevada.edu

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Jennifer Reid Keene comes to Las Vegas from Florida State University in Tallahassee. At UNLV, she teaches graduate and undergraduate statistical analysis, Sociology of Aging & the Life Course, Introduction to Sociology, Quantitative Research Methods, and Sociology of Marriage and the Family. Jennifer's research interests include gender and age stratification, as well as paid work and family issues. She has conducted research on work-family balance, work-family tradeoffs, and the effects of spousal caregiving on survivors' well-being in widowhood. She is currently working with Dr. Prokos on a project examining disparities in the provision and use of employer provided health insurance and another project on the work hour preferences of workers who are "sandwiched" between eldercare and childcare responsibilities. In addition, with Dr. Prokos, she is conducting other research on children's economic well-being in two parent families and those being raised by grandparents. In 2002, Drs. Keene and Prokos founded a local chapter of Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS). In 2005, Keene won the College of Liberal Arts William Morris Teaching Award and the UNLV Alumni Association Award for Student-Centeredness.

Recent publications include:

· Prokos, Anastasia and Jennifer Reid Keene. 2005. "The Long-Term Effects of Spousal Caregiving on Survivors' Well-Being in Widowhood." Social Science Quarterly 86, 3:664-682.
· Reid Keene, Jennifer and John R. Reynolds. 2005. "The Job Costs of Family Demands: Gender Differences in Negative Family-to-Work Spillover." Journal of Family Issues 26, 3:275-299.
· Reid Keene, Jennifer. 2005. "Age Discrimination in Employment." in the Encyclopedia of Career Development. Gerard A. Callahan and Jeff Greenhaus, eds. Sage. In press.
· Quadagno, Jill, Jennifer Reid Keene, and Debra Street. 2005. "Health Policy and Old Age: An International Review." Pp. 605-612 in The Cambridge Handbook of Age and Ageing, Malcolm Johnson, ed.. Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press.
· Reid Keene, Jennifer and Jill Quadagno. 2004. "Predictors of Perceived Work-Family Balance: Gender Difference or Gender Similarity" Sociological Perspectives 47, 1: 1-24.
· Reid Keene, Jennifer. 2004. "Balancing Work and Caregiving." Pp. 123-131 in Thriving on an Aging Workforce: Strategies for Organizational and Systemic Change. Paulette T. Beatty and Roemer M. S. Visser, eds. Melbourne, FL: Krieger Publishing Co.

Joined faculty in 2001.

jkeene@unlv.nevada.edu

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Stephanie Kent received her PhD in Sociology from the Ohio State University in 2005. Her major areas of interest include criminology and the politics of crime control. Her dissertation examined the sociological determinants of lethal violence by and against the police in U.S. cities since 1980. Other research includes an analysis of cross-national differences in the amount of police and an investigation of the effects of race and crime on the size of police departments in U.S. cities. Current projects include a panel analysis of the sociopolitical factors that explain interracial homicide. In addition to the police and homicide studies, Stephanie has a research agenda that focuses on the death penalty both in the United States and cross-nationally. She recently published a paper that examined the links between past lynchings and the number of current death sentences in U.S. states. Her work can be found in Social Problems, the American Sociological Review, Criminology, and the Encyclopedia of Disability. Current UNLV courses include Crime and Criminal Behavior and Juvenile Delinquency.

Joined faculty in 2005.

stephanie.kent@ccmail.nevada.edu

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Aaron Ketchell received his Ph.D. in American Studies from the University of Kansas in 2004. His major areas of interest include American religious life, classical/contemporary theory, leisure, and cultural studies. His dissertation, Holy Hills: Religion and Recreation in Branson, Missouri, examines the historical relationship between religiosity and tourism in a town dubbed the Family Entertainment Capital of the World. Holy Hills is currently under contract with Johns Hopkins University Press with publication expected in fall, 2007. Aaron is also co-author of Health through Faith and Community (Haworth Press, forthcoming October, 2006), a study resource that encourages Christian congregations to enhance the well-being of individual church members as well as society as a whole through a focus upon the physical, mental, social, spiritual, and environmental aspects of health. He has published on the topic of religion and American culture in the Council of Societies for the Study of Religion Bulletin, The Journal of American Culture, and Great Plains Quarterly. Current UNLV courses include Classical Social Theory, Modern Social Theory, and Sociology of Religion. He will also teach Sociology of Leisure in spring, 2007.

aaron.ketchell@unlv.edu

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