Directory

Dr. Ray Barrow has been at Truman since 1981. He holds a bachelor's degree from Muskingum College and his master's and doctorate degrees from the University of Arizona. His teaching interests include criminology, sociology of social problems, inter-group relations, social methodology, and sociology of health. His current research focuses on patient-health care provider interaction, descriptive ethics, inter-ethnic relations, and radical criminology. Dr. Barrow is a member of the Midwest Sociological Society, the Communal Studies Association, and is past president of the Missouri Sociological Association.

 Dr. Julie Flowerday came to Truman the fall of 2008. She is a graduate of Wayne State University and holds a doctorate in social anthropology from the University of North Carolina (1998) where she began studying, visualizing, and writing about the relationship of changing landscape and shifting knowledge in a small community of the Hunza valley in the high Karakoram Mountains of the Northern Areas, a UN protectorate of Pakistan. Dr. Flowerday is especially interested in the changing nexus of political rule and economy through ethnographic techniques including photography. Publications of book chapters and articles include Hunza Now and Then and Then Again (2005); Framing Change (2005); Change over Time. Hunza in Treble Vision: 1930s and 1990s (2006); and Blasting a Boulder and Building Memories (2009). Dr. Flowerday holds membership in the: Association of Asian Studies, Fulbright Association, American Institute of Pakistan Studies, American Anthropological Association, American Association of University Professors and maintains interest in South Asian history, colonialism, and documentary studies. This year she will be offering courses in Anthropological Inquiries, Global Issues, Language and Culture, and Comparative Cultures. Dr. Flowerday also has a list of recent publications.

Dr. Robert Graber has been professor emeritus of anthropology since 2006. He holds a bachelor’s degree from Indiana University, and his master’s and doctorate from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He has published many scholarly articles and several anthropological books, best known of which is Valuing Useless Knowledge (Truman State University Press 1995). His latest book, Plutonic Sonnets (PublishAmerica 2008), is a volume of poetry devoted to the discovery and naming of planets and elements–a saga of science, history, myth, and romance. (It is available at www.publishamerica.com and online booksellers.) He is a member of the American Anthropological Association and Phi Beta Kappa.

Dr. Wolfgang Hoeschele has been at Truman since 1998. Dr. Hoeschele received his doctoral degree from Pennsylvania State University, his masters degree from Washington State University, and his bachelors degree from the College of Wooster.  His teaching and research interests include human-nature interactions, international development issues, and attempts to create a more sustainable economy, with a special emphasis on social power relations and the social construction of scarcity.  He has done field research on these issues in India and in western Europe.  Dr. Hoeschele has a publications  and links listing.

Dr. Amber Johnson is Chair of the Department of Society & Environment and has been at Truman since 2001. Dr. Johnson received her bachelor’s degree at Rice University.  She holds master’s and doctorate degrees from Southern Methodist University. Dr. Johnson is a member of Sigma Xi, the Society for American Archaeology, the American Anthropological Association, and is currently on the board of trustees for the Missouri Archeological Society. Her primary research interest is to explain similarities and differences in patterns of culture change around the world for the last 20-30,000 years.  Current research includes both recording information from the ethnographic literature on the organization in economy, technology, and material culture of contemporary societies and determining how to mark organizationally important changes in archaeological sequences.  Interested students are encouraged to participate in this research. Dr. Johnson teaches Anthropological Inquiry, Anthro-pology of Gender, Anthropological Theory, World Prehistory, Human Fossil Ancestry, Social Method-ology, and Senior Seminar. In addition, she enjoys her role as the faculty sponsor for the Anthropology Club. Dr. Johnson has several publications.

Dr. Elaine McDuff has been at Truman since 2001. Dr. McDuff received her bachelor’s degree in Religion from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.  She earned her master’s degree at Duke University and her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Iowa.  Her research interests include stratification, sociology of work, work and family, gender inequality, and sociology of religion.  Dr. McDuff is the past president of the Missouri Sociological Association and a member of the Board of Directors of Midwest Sociological Society, American Sociological Association, Sociologists Without Borders, Sociologists for Women in Society, Religious Research Association, Sigma Xi, Phi Beta Kappa, and Phi Kappa Phi. She teaches Sociological Inquiry, Structured Inequalities, Sociology of Gender, Globalization, Sociology of the Family, Social Psychology, Sociological Theory, Sociology of Religion, and Senior Seminar. In addition, she supervises student internships in sociology each semester and leads a study abroad program in Capetown, South Africa every other year.  Dr. McDuff is also the faculty advisor for Students for Social Change (Sociology Club), Truman in Africa, and Alpha Kappa Delta. Dr. McDuff also has a list of publications.

Dr. Bonnie Mitchell came to Truman the fall of 2008.  Dr. Mitchell received her Bachelor of Arts in Spanish and her Master of Arts in Latin American Studies from Brigham Young University.  She received her Ph.D. in Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin.    Her specializations include comparative race and ethnicity, gender, and religion.  Her current teaching interests include social change, environmental sociology and qualitative methods.  Her research focuses on Native American Powwows and cultures of resistance in the western hemisphere.  Dr. Mitchell chairs a Comparative Race and Ethnicity panel for the Midwest Sociological Society and serves as President of the Missouri Sociological Association. Dr. Mitchell also has a publications listing.

Dr. Jonathan Smith has been at Truman since 1994. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Oregon and holds an M.A. in Linguistics from the University of Texas-Arlington, and his B.S. in Geography from the University of Nevada-Reno. Dr. Smith has diverse teaching and research interests which include ethnolinguistic geography; rural Missouri geography, the religious and cultural geography of small towns, cultural geographies of Africa, the geography of environmental conflicts, and the geographic perspectives on origin issues.