DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY

Department Faculty

Professor Dale Dannefer

Dale Dannefer's scholarly work is concerned with the links between social dynamics and life course processes. A pioneer in developing cumulative advantage theory as an explanatory life-course framework, he has published more than 60 articles, monographs and chapters in sociology, psychology, human development, education and gerontology. Dannefer's current scholarship focuses on the effects of globalization on life course patterns and the problem of age segregation. He has just completed a large-scale empirical study of "culture change" in long-term care settings. He teaches courses on life course and human development, the sociology of work and education, and social theory. Dannefer has been a research fellow in the Social Control program at Yale University, at the Andrus Gerontology Center at the University of Southern California, and at the Max Planck Institute for Human Development and Education in Berlin.

Professor Gary Deimling

Gary Deimling's research interests focus on the effects of life threatening illness on the mental health of older adults, and he received a major grant from the National Cancer Institute to conduct research in this area. More specifically, his interests include the study of cancer survivors, the coping resources they have developed, their health beliefs and behaviors, and the stress effects they have experienced and continue to experience. He also continues to conduct research and publish in the area of family caregiving for older adults with specific interest in the strain experienced by family member caring for Alzheimer's patients.

Professor Brian Gran

Brian K. Gran is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Faculty Associate of the Center for Policy Studies and University Center on Aging and Health, Case Western Reserve University. He is a Research Affiliate of the Joint Center for Poverty Research of Northwestern University and the University of Chicago. He earned a law degree from Indiana University (Bloomington) and a doctorate in Sociology from Northwestern University. Gran was a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Scholar in Health Policy Research at Yale University. His interests include comparative social policy, political sociology, sociology of law, and methodology. Gran's most recent work appears in Sociological Quarterly, Social Science Quarterly, Journal of Aging Studies, Buffalo Public Interest Law Journal, and International Journal of Health Services. Gran's current research focuses on comparative social policy as it is formed in the intersection of the public and private sectors.

Professor Sue Hinze

Professor Hinze is an Associate Professor of Sociology and Program Faculty in Women’s Studies.  She earned her doctorate in sociology from Vanderbilt University. Her research and teaching interests lie primarily in medical sociology, gender, social inequality and the emerging work/family or work/life nexus. Much of her research has been on physicians. She uses quantitative and qualitative methodologies to examine (broadly) medical culture.  Professor Hinze has also researched the social construction of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome and, with colleagues in the medical school, racial/ethnic disparities in medical care. Her newest project is on the medicalization of “technological” addictions and how social, institutional, structural and cultural dynamics shape gaming behaviors. Finally, Professor Hinze is exploring how parental work in a 24/7 global economy influences the daily, lived experiences of children. Her work appears in Research in the Sociology of Health Care, Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health and Medicine, Research in the Sociology of Work, American Journal of Public Health, Work and Occupations, Academic Emergency Medicine, The Annals of Internal Medicine, The Sociological Quarterly, and Social Forces.

Professor Eva Kahana

Eva Kahana teaches courses in Stress, Health and Coping, Sociology of Institutional Care, and Sociology of Mental Illness. She has been engaged in a program of research related to understanding how older adults cope with a broad spectrum of stressors ranging from increasing frailty to relocation, institutionalization and surviving trauma in their lives. She has worked on a series of NIA funded studies focusing on proactive adaptations undertaken by older adults as they face stressful life situations. Based on these studies she has delineated models of successful aging. Her recent work has also focused on health care of older adults and the health care relationships forged between patients, physicians and family caregivers. Eva Kahana directs the Elderly Care Research Center and enjoys both mentoring of students in research and developing innovative models relevant to aging and medical sociology. She also serves as director of the Gerontological Studies minor and co-major.

Professor Jessica Kelley-Moore

Professor Jessica Kelley-Moore studies the causes and consequences of health disparities over the life course, particularly those related to race, socioeconomic status, and disability.  She is currently interested in how the neighborhood and environment influence the differential health   outcomes observed in mid-life and older adults.  She currently has a grant from the National Institute on Aging to study the relative influence of individual and community-level characteristics on the subsequent health of Black and White older adults over time.  In addition, she is a  Co-Ivestigator on the National Institute on Aging Intramural study “Healthy Aging in Neighborhoods of Diversity across the Life Span” [HANDLS], a 20-year panel study of nearly 4,000 Black and White residents of Baltimore, MD.  She designed and conducts the ecological (environmental, city, and neighborhood) levels of the project, so that we may better understand how the social characteristics, physical environment, and available resources of a neighborhood influence health and well-being.

Professor Emilia McGucken

Prior to joining the Department of Sociology in 2001, Professor McGucken was a tenured associate professor of Sociology and Criminology at Ohio Northern University, Ohio.  She is now a Senior Instructor and Co-Director of the Sociology Undergraduate Program.  She is currently engaged in a research project focusing on a systematic assessment of Ohio professional healthcare providers’ beliefs and opinions toward substance abusing persons.  Several factors influencing attitudes toward causation and intervention strategies are being examined.  The knowledge obtained in this study may provide important information resulting in a better and more supportive approach to the multiple needs of substance abusing persons.  Another area of research interest involves restorative justice theories and their practical application to “High School Peer Court Justice”.  The theory and practice of restorative justice philosophy provides both college and high school students with opportunities for dialogue, reflection, insight into the circumstances of the incident, including both the victim and the offender, and the likelihood of “making things right”.  This learning experience helps students see how abstract academic principles learned in the classroom can translate to the real world, facilitating the implementation of “School-Based Peer Justice:  An Alternative to Traditional School Discipline.” 

Professor David Warner

Professor David Warner’s research focuses on both work and health from a life course perspective, emphasizing the role of marriage and family relationships in generating and maintaining gender and racial/ethnic inequalities. More   specifically, he is engaged in two broad lines of research. The first line examines the end of the work career—particularly retirement—and the factors that differentiate the timing and permanency of labor force withdrawal. The second line of research explores the life course origins of health and mortality disparities in later-life. In order to understand the implications of marriage and family for stratifying work and health experiences at older ages, his research looks at how micro-level timing and exposure processes shape not only individual life course transitions but also population-level trends and social group differences.  He teaches courses on aging and the life course, marriage and family, population, and quantitative methods.  Professor Warner received his doctorate in Sociology and Demography from Penn State University and prior to joining the Case faculty as an Assistant Professor was a postdoctoral fellow in the   Carolina Population Center at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Associated Faculty

David E. Biegel, Ph.D., University of Maryland at Baltimore, Henry Zucker Professor, Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences, Case Western Reserve University

Robert Binstock, Ph.D., Harvard University, Henry R. Luce Professor of Aging, Health, and Society, School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University

Karen Bowman, Ph.D., University of Akron, Research Associate Professor, Cancer Survivor Research Project, Case Western Reserve University

Jennifer Fishman, Ph.D. , University of California, San Francisco, Assistant Professor of Bioethics.

Boaz Kahana, Ph.D., University of Chicago, Co-Director, Elderly Care Research Center; Professor of Psychology, Cleveland State University

Gunhild Hagestad, Ph.D., University of Minnesota, Professor of Sociology, Agder University College, Kristiansand, Norway

Linda Noelker, Ph.D., Case Western Reserve University, Senior Vice President, Planning and Organizational Resources, Benjamin Rose Institute of Cleveland

Kathleen Smyth, Ph.D., Case Western Reserve University, Associate Professor Professor Epidemiology and Biostatistics

Kurt Stange, M.D., Ph.D., University of North Carolina, Associate Professor of Sociology, Medicine, and Epidemiology & Biostatistics Epidemiology

Aloen Townsend, Ph.D., University of Michigan, Associate Professor, Mandel School of Applied Social Sciences

Carol Whitlach, Ph.D., Pennsylvania State University, Assistant Director and Senior Research Scientist, Benjamin Rose Institute of Cleveland

May Wykle, Ph.D., F.A.A.N., Case Western Reserve University, Florence Cellar Professor and Chair of Gerontology, Frances Payne Bolton School of Nursing; Director, Case Western Reserve University