What’s your mission in academia?
I am interested in the production of knowledge, and power-plays in academia over core methodologies, concepts and truth claims. I like to highlight those struggles in my work, helping to change knowledge on race, gender and sexuality when I can. I help my students see and understand these struggles in what I teach.

What’s in your job description?
I teach, advise, inspire and socialize my students into academia. I professionalize them. But my main job is to research and write about ideas that can shape my discipline. 

How did you become interested in your subject area?
I have been interested in my subject for as long as I can remember. I have always cared deeply about inequality and cruelty. I remember crying over the Vietnam War when I was a preschooler. When I was an adolescent, I loved sci-fi movies, such as “Planet of the Apes,” and really honed in on the social commentaries in these works. I never really considered doing anything else.

What do students learn from you?
They learn to treat their everyday worlds as social laboratories. I encourage them to read anything they can, and to hunt for information about issues that interest them. I teach them to critique sources of information, and how to think for themselves. 

What makes your class interesting? Exciting?
I find humor in almost everything. I like what I teach a lot, and I find it always relevant. I think that shows to the students.

What kinds of things do your graduates do?
Some go to graduate school, many become police officers or counsel juvenile delinquents and others do research in the public and private sector.  

What is your favorite aspect of your subject? Why?
I love the elasticity of sociological concepts and the fact that I can constantly find new ways to synthesize material in new settings. I love the “aha” moment.

What most pleases you about society today? What most concerns you?
I love that Al Gore has made such a splash on the global scene and that he has been successful at using data to convince people to be concerned about global warming. I am most concerned about the fact that so few people read these days. In an era when we are constantly bombarded with information—much of it empirically ambiguous—we rarely have time to track down the source of the information, verify it, and interpret it through our own lenses. We are so easily misled.

What’s your current research?
I am currently beginning a project on the hyper-sexualizing of pre-adolescent girls. There is a lot of data on the struggles faced by adolescent and teen girls in today’s culture, but none so far examines pre-adolescent girls and the ways that they are affected by the media, peers, family, etc., in a way that seems to disguise objectification as empowerment. 
 
What’s a good book you recently read?
I try to read 15 to 20 novels a year. Here’s my most recent list of must-read fiction: “Middlesex,” “Five Quarters of the Orange” and “Donor-Boy.”

Where do you go in DeKalb for a good meal?
I love Pizza Villa, Fatty’s, Burrito Loco and P.J.’s in Sycamore (but I have really good cholesterol anyway). 

Why did you choose your first college/university?
I went to a Baptist women’s college, but not because I am Baptist. It was small, with an enrollment of 1,200 students, and near my family. I needed that then.

Who was your favorite professor? Why?
So many: Rhonda Zingraff at Meredith, Don Tomaskovic-Devey and Barbara Risman at NCSU. I loved professors who made me think, held me accountable, graded me hard and created assignments that helped me learn. 

Why should students come to NIU?
NIU has good professors who care about teaching, even though they are also strong researchers. You can create your own major if there’s not one here that fits you. It’s big enough to be diverse but small enough for students to get attention from experts in the field. We are close enough to Chicago to attract excellent colloquium speakers. And we have a great library. 

What’s your best advice to students who want to succeed?
READ! Read for fun, not just for school. Read your work aloud, then rewrite it. Enjoy the classroom—you get to read, write and talk about ideas. What a luxury. Soak it up.

If you weren’t teaching, what would you be doing?
I would be gardening, sewing or some other crafty thing that doesn’t pay anything. I would consider going back to school for a degree in landscape architecture.

Photos by Susan Carlson, NIU Media Services

Department: Sociology

Hometown: Raleigh, N.C.

My degrees: Ph.D. in sociology, North Carolina State University; master’s degree in sociology, College of William and Mary; bachelor’s degrees in sociology and political science, Meredith College.

Arrived at NIU: 1996

I teach: Qualitative Research Methods, Foundations in Sociology, LGBT courses and Sociology of Knowledge