Biographical Statement:
I am interested in sociology, as well as the other social sciences and the humanities, largely for what they offer as instruments of human liberation from social and economic oppression.
My research and teaching interests include racism, poverty policy, political sociology, and urban sociology.
My current book project is tentatively titled, Conceptualizing Racism: A Critique and Toolkit for Building Racism Studies. The twin goals of Conceptualizing Racism are embodied in its subtitle in the words “critique” and “toolkit.” This book’s critique goal is to make the case for the need to study racism directly and explicitly, an interdisciplinary scholarly approach which I call Racism Studies. Its action goal is to assemble the conceptual chest of tools with which to build Racism Studies as a specialty area.
A more recent and emerging interest of mine is the social and cultural factors that encourage or inhibit the full realization of human consciousness and being; be it called happiness, joy, transcendence, enlightenment, spiritual evolution, etc.
I teach at the Storrs campus each fall semester and in the Urban and Community Studies Program at the Greater Hartford Campus each spring semester. Courses taught include White Racism, African Americans and Social Protest, Sociological Perspectives on Poverty, and the Social Construction of Happiness. I teach graduate seminars at the Storrs campus on Racism Theory and on The American Response to Poverty. I also coordinate an interdisciplinary “Conceptualizing Racism” study group comprised of UConn faculty and doctoral students.
For developing and teaching my White Racism course, I received a Northeast Magazine Connecticut Bloomer award for contributions to the quality of life of the state. The story of how the initial opposition to that course was defeated is featured in Joe Feagin and Hernan Vera’s Liberation Sociology.
I am a proud father of a wonderful daughter, Anika Tene Cazenave, and enjoy being the grandfather of Graciela-Celestina Cazenave. I live in the Asylum Hill neighborhood of Hartford. CT. with my temperamental housemate, Tehute, the cat. My personal interests include hiking, enjoying nature, listening to jazz and the blues, African-American theater and film, reading, eating gumbo, and expanding my consciousness through meditation and other forms of spiritual practice. I am proud to have had a small speaking part in the movie The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman.
My life goals can be summed up as “Liberation through Struggle” and “Serenity through Practice.” |
University of Connecticut |