Faculty

Office: 123 Manchester Hall
Telephone: (860) 486-4190
E-Mail: noel.cazenave@uconn.edu

Biographical Statement:

I am interested in sociology, as well as the other social sciences, largely for what they offer as instruments of human liberation from social and economic oppression.

My research and teaching interests in poverty, racism, political sociology, and urban studies center on America 's response to poverty among African Americans and other people of color.

In my next book project I will develop a theory of what I refer to as the Urban Racial State through an examination of racial conflict over the control of anti-poverty programs in two medium-size northeastern U.S. cities in the mid to late 1960s. That manuscript is tentatively titled The Urban Racial State: Programming Race Relations through Community Action.

A more recent and emerging interest of mine is social 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 also teach graduate seminars at the Storrs campus on Racism Theory and on The American Response to Poverty.

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 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."

Education:

Ph.D., Tulane University. 1977.
M.A. (Psychology), University of Michigan. 1971.
B.A. (Psychology), Dillard University, 1970.
Post-Doctoral Study, University of Pennsylvania, 1989; University of
New Hampshire, 1977-8.

Selected Publications:

Books

2007. Impossible Democracy: The Unlikely Success of the War on Poverty Community Action Programs. SUNY Press. For more details, click here .

2001. Kenneth J. Neubeck and Noel A. Cazenave. Welfare Racism: Playing the Race Card Against America's Poor. Routledge. The winner of five book awards.

Articles

2000. "War on Poverty," pp. 774-777 in Waldo E. Martin and Patricia Sullivan, eds. Civil Rights in the United States. Macmillan Reference.

1999. Noel A. Cazenave and Darlene Alvarez Maddern. "Defending the White Race: White Male Faculty Opposition to a 'White Racism' Course." Race and Society , 2(1): 25-50.

1999. "Ironies of Urban Reform: Professional Turf Battles in the Planning of the Mobilization for Youth Program Precursor to the War on Poverty." Journal of Urban History, 26(1): 22-43.