Social Sciences Faculty
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Dr. Carina Bandhauer, Chair and Professor of Sociology
BandhauerC@wcsu.edu, 203-837-8650
Dr. Carina Bandhauer, Professor of Sociology, earned a Ph.D. at Binghamton University in 2001. She specializes in the sociology of racism, immigration and globalization with a regional specialization in Latin America. She has two research foci: racism targeting Latinos, specifically as it foments from the anti-immigrant movement; and, also, the racialized rifts or disconnects between people of color and white native born citizens. Bandhauer is committed to teaching, researching and working to achieve social justice through awareness. Dr. Bandhauer volunteers as a consultant and does diversity trainings both on and off campus. Moreover, she has long worked with immigrant communities in many capacities, but especially with undocumented students. She has also worked with U.S.-El Salvador Sister Cities to build and strengthen ongoing partnerships with rural communities in El Salvador since 1993. Bandhauer served as creative consultant for the production of the film, “El Pueblo Unido,” which documented her work in El Salvador and premiered at the Montreal Film Festival in 2004.
Dr. Christine Hegel-Cantarella, Associate Chair and Associate Professor of Anthropology
hegelcantarellac@wcsu.edu, 203-837-3914
Dr. Christine Hegel-Cantarella, holds an M.Phil. and a Ph.D. In Anthropology from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She teaches legal anthropology, economic anthropology, qualitative research methods, and Middle East anthropology, among other courses. She is broadly interested in the intersections between the law, economic practices, and culture, and examines access to and modalities of justice; contracting, status and personhood; and bureaucracy and documentary regimes. She has been awarded research grants from the National Science Foundation, the Social Science Research Council, and the Fulbright Commission to conduct ethnographic research in in Cairo and Port Said, Egypt, and has authored essays for the edited volumes Anthropology of the Middle East and North Africa Into the New Millennium (Indiana University Press) and Family Law in the Muslim World (I.B. Tauris) and an article for a special issue of Law, Culture, and Humanities Journal. Hegel-Cantarella has also been engaged in projects that explore the intersection between art, theatre, and ethnographic research. In collaboration with her husband, scenic designer and Associate Professor of Design at Pace University Luke Hegel-Cantarella, she co-designed an installation piece on temporary housing entitled 214 Square Feet, which has been displayed at numerous locales in Orange County, California, and is currently designing a video installation tentatively entitled Trade is Sublime that responds to and engages with ethnographic research on the World Trade Organization being undertaken by a team of American and European anthropologists.
View the Productive Encounters website for more information on this work
Dr. Rotua Lumbantobing, Associate Professor of Economics, AAUP WCSU Chapter President
lumbantobingr@wcsu.edu, 203-837-8457
Dr. Rotua Lumbantobing, holds a Master’s and a Ph.D. in economics from North Carolina State University. She also has a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Indonesia and an MBA from the University of Rochester. Prof. Lumbantobing specializes in sports economics. Her current research projects concern competitive balance in the National Basketball Association and the National Football League. She teaches sports economics, environmental economics, economic development, comparative economic systems, and statistics, as well as principles courses.
Dr. R. Averell Manes, Professor of Political Science and Conflict Studies
manesa@wcsu.edu, 203-837-8452
Dr. R. Averell Manes earned a Ph.D. from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. She teaches comparative politics, research methodology and conflict resolution courses. Founder and Director of the Conflict Resolution Project, she has offered information, training and services to members of the WCSU since 1995. Since its inception in 2008, Dr. Manes has co-chaired and coordinated the Hancock Student Leadership Program with the Office of Academic Affairs. In 2013, she was appointed as the campus Coordinator for Academic Service Learning and Civic Engagement. A conflict analysis and resolution specialist, she has worked since 1985 as a consultant, trainer and intervener with government agencies, public and private schools, businesses, nonprofit organizations, political parties, town councils and private individuals. Dr. Manes’ publications include The Pieds-Noirs (Academica, 2005), “Talk Time: Training Children in Creative Conflict Resolution” (Fall 2006) and “Walk the Talk: Back to Basics in Workplace Conflicts” (Fall 2014) in ACResolution Magazine.
Dr. Manoj Misra, Associate Professor of Sociology
misram@wcsu.edu, 203-837-8453
Dr. Manoj Misra earned a PhD in Sociology from the University of Alberta, Canada. Before joining this university, he was an Assistant Professor of Sustainable Development at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, Republic of Korea. After the completion of his PhD, Dr. Misra was invited as a visiting research fellow at the Agrarian Alternatives cluster at Heidelberg University, Germany. His writings have won best graduate paper awards at the American Anthropological Association and the Canadian Association for the Study of International Development. He has published research articles in top-tier academic journals including in the Journal of Agrarian Change, Agriculture and Human Values, and Climate and Development. He also regularly writes in newspapers and magazines. His research interests are agrarian change and food sovereignty, energy issues and climate justice, and development dispossession in South Asia.
Dr. Oluwole Owoye, Professor of Economics
owoyeo@wcsu.edu, 203-837-8456
Dr. Oluwole Owoye teaches microeconomics, macroeconomics, monetary economics, labor economics and economic development. He has presented research in these areas at national and international economic conferences. Owoye, who holds a Ph.D. from Northern Illinois University, has published numerous articles in periodicals such as The Journal of Developing Areas, Global Economic Review and The Journal of International Trade and Economic Development. He was a visiting Senior Fulbright Scholar in the department of economics at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, in 2003, where he was among the initial group of professors who taught in the collaborative Ph.D. program for West, East, and Southern Africa at Ibadan, Nigeria. Since 2004, he has been a visiting professor of monetary economics in the collaborative Ph.D. program’s Joint Facility for Electives, African Economic Research Consortium in Nairobi, Kenya.
Dr. Zuohong Pan, Professor of Economics
panz@wcsu.edu, 203-837-8462
Dr. Zuohong Pan earned a Ph.D. from Wayne State University. He teaches macroeconomics, microeconomics, money & banking, mathematical economics, economic development, applied econometrics, contemporary domestic economic issues, social research issues and social research seminars. His research interests include international trade and finance, financial modeling & forecasting, economic development and urban economics. He has co-authored/edited a number of books, including Investment Banking in the United States and Taiwan in the 21st Century. Pan has published numerous papers in periodicals such as Urban Studies, China Economic Review, the Journal of Computational Intelligence in Finance and Computational Economics. He also reviews for professional journals, such as Urban Studies and China Economic Review.
Dr. Jessica Anderson Schofield, Assistant Professor of Political Science
schofieldj@wcsu.edu, 203-837-8457
Dr. Jessica Anderson Schofield earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Missouri in 2017 and a B.A. in Global Studies and Political Science from South Dakota State University. She specializes in the study of international relations and comparative politics. Her research focuses primarily on issues relating to international human rights and enforcement of human rights law through international courts, and she is currently working on a project examining allegations of African bias in the International Criminal Court. Dr. Schofield also conducts research on topics relating to women’s rights, political violence, and African politics. She has presented her research at numerous national and international conferences, and her work on human rights theory has been published in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Empirical International Relations Theory.
Dr. Robert D. Whittemore, Professor of Anthropology
whittemorer@wcsu.edu, 203-837-8461
Dr. Robert D. Whittemore earned his Ph.D. at the University of California in Los Angeles. After serving as a Peace Corps Volunteer and teacher and educational director for a child development center in Massachusetts, he did ethnographic fieldwork among the Mandinka people of the Casamance region of the Republic of Senegal. He also worked in urban Los Angeles with the developmentally disabled. As an associate of the Institute for Writing & Thinking at Bard College, Whittemore, in his classes at Western, explores the relationship between writing and thought, underscoring the importance of developing the kind of ethnographic sensibility essential to global citizenship. His wife, Elizabeth, who has collaborated with him on some of his research and writing, is a poet, playwright and novelist. Their eldest daughter, Miranda, is a novelist and their youngest, Vanessa Kai, is a filmmaker.
Dr. Howell Williams, Assistant Professor of Political Science
williamsh@wcsu.edu, 203-837-9335
Dr. Howell Williams holds a PhD in Politics from the New School for Social Research. His doctoral dissertation, “Re-Focus on the Family: The Development of a Liberal Family Politics,” was awarded the 2017 Hannah Arendt Dissertation Award in Politics. Williams researches the relationship between families and the state in America politics from the mid-twentieth century to the present. This research combines Williams’s interest in welfare policy, political discourse, and the rights of women and LGBT people. Williams incorporates these research interests into his political science classes on a range of topics, including American government, political institutions, political theory, and gender and sexuality politics. He has fellowships from the British Library and the U.K. Higher Education Academy. His writing has appeared in PS: Politics & Political Science, American Immigration (2nd Ed.), and The Guardian, and he contributes political commentary for the BBC. His current research project is a book on family values rhetoric in the contemporary Democratic Party.
Social Sciences Department Adjunct Faculty
Elan Abrell, Ph.D., abrelle@wcsu.edu
Al Bibeau, bibeaua@wcsu.edu
Robert Brown, Ph.D., brownr@wcsu.edu
Bernard Fitzpatrick, fitzpatrickb@wcsu.edu
He has been teaching at Western since 2000 in the Social Science Department. At Western he has taught Introduction to Political Science (PS 100), American Government (PS 102) World Governments, Economies and Cultures (PS 104), Introduction to Sociology (SOC 100) and State and Local Governments (PS 218). He also teaches at Naugatuck Valley Community College in the Social Sciences Division where he has taught Principles of Sociology (SOC 101), Contemporay Social Issues (SOC 201) Sociology of the Family (SOC 210), Social Inequality (SOC 221) and American Government. He previously taught at St. Joseph’s College in Patchogue, New York. After a career in public service (Peace Corps, VISTA, Head Start and Public Housing), he went back to graduate school in Political Science at UCONN.
Michael French, frenchm@wcsu.edu
Lisa Worth Huber, Ph.D., huberl@wcsu.edu
Dr. Lisa Huber holds a Ph.D. in Peace Studies and Conflict Transformation from Lancaster University in the UK. She designed and implemented CT’s first accredited MA program in Conflict Transformation at The Graduate Institute in Bethany, CT, where she was the Academic Director. She serves on the Board of Directors for the National Peace Academy and the Advisory Board for the Connecticut Center for Nonviolence. Lisa is a specialist in community peacebuilding and conflict resolution and has worked in diverse settings as a consultant, facilitator, and peace and justice educator. Lisa is certified and trained in a variety of dialogue and peacebuilding practices from restorative justice to Kingian nonviolence. She is a participatory action researcher with a focus on empathy development, one of the essential skills for creating a compassionate global society. www.lisaworthhuber.com
John Jowdy, jowdyj@wcsu.edu
Attorney Jowdy has been associated with the university since 1998 as an Adjunct Professor teaching courses in Political Science and American Government. A graduate of Boston College and New England School of Law (Boston), Attorney Jowdy is a trial lawyer with the Danbury law firm of Jowdy & Jowdy with an emphasis on civil litigation. In addition to his position at the university, Attorney Jowdy has served as an Attorney Trial Referee, Special Master in domestic relations cases, Attorney Fact Finder and Small Claims Hearing Magistrate in the Danbury Judicial District.
Farrukh Khan, Ph.D., khanf@wcsu.edu
Ali El Moustakim, elmoustakima@wcsu.edu
Bhargavi Ramamurthy, Ph.D., ramamurthyb@wcsu.edu
Joshua Regan, Ph.D., regank@wcsu.edu
Mita Saksena, Ph.D., saksenam@wcsu.edu
Faline Schneiderman, schneidermanf@wcsu.edu
Adjunct Professor of Sociology and Anthropology, earned an M.A. from the University of Connecticut in Anthropology, and has since pursued cultural resource management, archaeology, historic preservation, land use, and environmental activism. She is passionate about anthropology, archaeology, and historic preservation and serves as the President of Preserve New Fairfield, Inc. Ms. Schneiderman has been a professional archaeologist since 1987, meets the professional qualifications of the National Park Service’s 36CFR 61 and is certified by the Register of Professional Archaeologists (RPA). Her numerous publications include cultural resource assessments for local, state, and federal agencies, in addition to published papers on historical and archaeological findings. Her interests include urban transportation networks, large-scale public infrastructure systems, and Native American prehistory. She has served on local land-use and historic preservation boards, and is a founding member of her local Historic Properties Commission.
Cosimo Sgarlata, Ph.D., sgarlatac@wcsu.edu
see https://www.wcsu.edu/socialsci/archaeology/faculty/sgarlata/
Peggy Southard, southardp@wcsu.edu
Adjunct Professor of Non-Western Culture (southardp@wcsu.edu), earned a MA from Yale Graduate School of East Asian Studies. Her focus of study was on China and Japan. At WCSU, Peggy teaches Japanese Culture and Cultural Anthropology. Born under the Japanese Occupation in Hong Kong (1941-1945), Peggy has many stories to tell about her parents’ life during the four years of Japanese occupation. After the war, the colony was reverted to British rule until 1997 when it was returned to China. Peggy grew up under British colonial rule and received her primary and secondary education in a French Convent school. She received a teaching degree to teach English to Chinese students. Peggy and her husband have lived in Hong Kong, Paris, France and Saudi Arabia and traveled extensively throughout Europe and the Middle East when her husband flew as a pilot for Saudi Arabian Airlines on loan from TWA. Besides English, Peggy speaks Chinese and French.
Maureen Sperrazza, sperrazzam@wcsu.edu
Nicole Struth, struthn@wcsu.edu
Julie TelRav, Ph.D., telrayj@wcsu.edu
Hans Tokke, Ph.D., tokkeh@wcsu.edu
