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Dr. Dana Williams, Professor of Sociology
Ph.D. (Sociology), Drew University, 1986
email: danawilliams@valdosta.edu
Office: 229) 333-7194
University Center: 1137
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Dr. Dana Willliams holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Akron, with specialities in intersectional approaches to social inequalities, social movements, anarchist-sociology, and altruism/oscial solidarity. Dr. Williams is co-authoring a book entitled Anarchy & Society: An Open-Ended Draft of a Future Anarchist-Sociology with Dr. Jeffrey A. Shantz (Kwantlen Polytechnic University) for the Series on Critical Social Sciences (Brill) and has co-edited a special issue of Working USA: The Journal of Labor & Society. Other research has appeared in peer-reviewed journals including Race, Ethnicity, & Education, Sociology of Sport Journal, Humanity & Society, Contemporary Justice Review, and the Journal of Political Ideologies, as well as writing in small-circulation 'zines like Free Soup, Pigeon Breath, and Agricouture. Dr. Williams has had research reported upon in the Fargo Forum, and has been interviewed for the Sociological Imagination blog and the film Capitalism in Crisis.
Dr. Williams has taught courses in sociological theory, social inequalities, research methods, social movements, social problems and others. Students have done projects as varied as creating mass bicycled rides, organizing for campus daycare support, and protesting against polluting energy projects, as well as written papers based on breaching experiments, applications of social theory to popular movies, campus-based research project proposals, and research on law-breaking corporations and social movement organizations. Dr. Williams has an interest in classroom critical thinking strategies and the creation of student-managed learning spaces.
In addition to working with community organizations like the American Friends Service Committee and Food Not Bombs, Dr. Williams has also helped to organize other projects such as students Taking Action for a New Democracy and an American Association of University Professor's allies network for studetns to support faculty union organizing, among others. Dr. Williams' community work has also included a neighborhood study on billboard placement (for Scenic Ohio), member surveys of the Ohio Committee on Corporations, Law, Democracy, and an evaluation of the Cleveland living wage law.
Other interests include food security and cooperative food projects, permaculture, anarchist theory and practice, critical history, alternative transportation and the free/libre/open-source software movement.