SearchFaculty Research
James Ault is collaborating with Dr. Stephanie Wernig in analyzing variables that predict academic success for undergraduates at Creighton. He is also working with faculty and administrators in the School of Dentistry to analyze variables that predict satisfaction with professional practice patterns of alumni. He is also in the seventh year of a project to evaluate the relative reliability of surveys of student opinion about faculty effectiveness in classroom settings.
Roger Bergman is researching and writing a book to be titled "Catholic Social Learning: How to Educate the Faith that Does Justice", based on his experience as a reflective practitioner of justice education in various faith-related settings, his awareness of the need for reflection on Catholic social pedagogy, and his own work as the founding director of the Justice & Peace Studies Program at Creighton and his commitment to justice in Jesuit higher education. His agenda for 2008 is to research and write a chapter on service-learning and justice and to prepare the entire manuscript for submission to a publisher.
Ray Bucko is currently researching and writing a book introduction for a republication of by the University of Nebraska Press "Conquering the Mighty Sioux" by William James Bordeaux. He is working with Marcia Poole, director of the Betty Strong Encounter Center, on a permanent exhibit which will describe Native games encountered by Lewis and Clark on their journey and integrate them with a wider range of Native American games in this area. Fr. Bucko also continues his research on Peter the Aleut with a proposed second article on contemporary interpretations of the saint’s life. Finally, Fr. Bucko is working on a research grant to update the Buechel Museum database and make it a Lakota language learning resource.
Barbara Dilly is currently on sabbatical, completing her book length manuscript on the "Social and Cultural Transformations of the American Family Farmer's Daughter." This project is an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural study of the social and economic role of daughters of farmers in American agriculture and rural society. It recognizes that the cheap, flexible, highly adaptive, and often skilled labor of young farm women in various racial, ethnic, class, and historical contexts was not recognized as such because of the iconic status of the yeoman family farm by an American public that romanticized its image of honest labor, intimate kinship relations, and opportunities for social mobility through land ownership and entrepreneurial business talents. This work tests the hypotheses that inequality in race, class, ethnicity, and gender attitudes and practices across time and place in American agricultural history are demonstrated in popular culture depictions of young women in agriculture. A large data base of these images in art, literature, illustrations, nursery rhymes, music, film, joke lore, and advertisements is the primary focus of analysis in this work.
Charles Harper revised two books, Food, Society, and Environment, Second edition, published by Trafford Publishers, and Society and Environment, fourth edition, which will be published in 2008 by Pearson Prentice-Hall. He wrote and presented two invited papers: "Environmental Education: Culture, Incentives, and Public Campaigns," presented to the fourth annual conference on environmental education in Cheju South Korea, sponsored by the Korean Government and Korean UNESCO, and "Religion and Environmentalism," presented to the Symposium on Religion and Environment sponsored by the Kripke center for the study of religion and society. The second paper is currently submitted for publication.
Dawn Irlbeck is working with Julia Hudson, a current SOC senior, researching the experiences of Latino police officers as they police different racial/ethnic groups. They will be presenting their initial research findings as the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences conference in Cincinnati, OH in March, 2008. In addition, Dr. Irlbeck is completing a book on racial profiling for a scholarly publishing company, which will be published in 2008. Dr. Irlbeck is also working with another Creighton student, Ryan Vacanti, conducting a qualitative analysis of interactions between law enforcement officers and motorists during traffic stops.
Rebecca Murray is working with the Shannon Keating, current SOC senior, to research the effects of liquor-serving establishments on crime. They have teamed up with the Ph.D. research methods class at the School of Criminology at UNO to collect data. In addition, she will be using a summer faculty fellowship to research residence restrictions for sex offenders on recidivism. Finally, she is also working with Kristin Czerminger, former ANT major, and Bob Blair, chair of the Urban Studies Dept. at UNO, to research the effects of neighborhood empowerment on crime and environmental issues.
Alexander Rodlach is currently researching popular Zimbabwean beliefs associating HIV/AIDS with 'unhealthy,' western nutrition and implying a cure by returning to 'healthy,' traditional food items. He will give a paper on this topic during the annual meeting of the Society for Applied Anthropology. Further, he is studying, together with medical anthropologists from five different European countries, how immigrants cope with barriers to access to health care. They will hold a workshop on this topic during the biennial meeting of the European Association of Social Anthropologists. Finally, he and Dave Turkon from Ithaka College, NY, are researching the fact that HIV/AIDS in Africa forges partnerships among scholars and practitioners of different disciplines and professions. They organize a panel on this topic for the annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association.