The department is excited to announce two new additions for the upcoming academic year. Susanna Donaldson will joining the department as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Anthropology at West Virginia University. She completed her graduate work in cultural anthropology at the University of Iowa. Susanna’s research focuses on agricultural work and identity in southern Appalachia; though the majority of her field research has been conducted in a rural community located in Northeast Tennessee. Susanna’s dissertation explores the ways in which farmers and farmworkers organize and experience agricultural labor within the context of social, political and economic change. She is particularly interested in the transition from reciprocal labor to wage labor as it has occurred in the rural United States and the Appalachian region. Her dissertation demonstrates how reciprocal traditions – replaced relatively recently in Northeast Tennessee by hiring local and (im)migrant labor – influences contemporary ideas, values and decisions made about agricultural work. More broadly, Susanna’s research interests include U.S. agriculture, the anthropology of work, informal economies, cultural ecology, agrarian identity, and gender, race and class in rural communities Additionally, Lynne Cossman joins the department as a Professor of Sociology and will serve as Department Chair. She has research and teaching interests in medical sociology, demography, and health services research. She joins WVU from Mississippi State University where she was Professor and Department Head of Sociology and a Research Fellow at the Social Science Research Center, examining issues related to health assessment, prevention, and social epidemiology. Her recent research focuses on spatial concentrations of mortality and morbidity, the physician workforce, and fear of crime for vulnerable (e.g., sick, elderly) populations. Her research projects have been funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, and Mississippis Division of Medicaid. Her work has been published in several sociology and interdisciplinary journals including the American Journal of Public Health, Social Problems, Health and Place, Population Research and Policy Review, Sociological Inquiry, and Sociological Spectrum.
Posted on: Fri, 16 May 2014 13:00:55 +0000
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