WAVA G. HANEY, Ph.D.
Professor of Sociology and Anthropology
UW-Richland
E-Mail: whaney@uwc.edu

My major areas of interest are Gender, Work and Family: U.S., Latin America, Western Europe; Social Stratification, Race and Ethnic Relations: U.S.; Social Change and Development in Latin America; and Theory.

I have edited two books, including Women and Farming: Changing Roles, Changing Structures (with Jane Knowles), Westview, 1988; and Agriculture and Natural Resources: Planning for Educational Priorities for the Twenty-first Century (with Donald Field), Westview, 1991. I have published chapters in seven edited books and published seven refereed journal articles. In 1993, I was the receipient of the U.W. System's Underkofler Excellence in Teaching Award. In 1998, I was the President of the Wisconsin Sociological Association.

During the past 28 years, I have taught Sociology, Cultural Anthropology; Women's Studies; Urban Studies and Interdisciplinary courses in the UW Colleges and at UW-Green Bay, and as a teaching assistant and visiting professor at UW-Madison. I have taught classes in standard classrooms, in a room at a shopping mall and at a state and a federal correctional facility. Some of my most interesting and challenging classes have been as part of a team of instructors. But regardless of the setting and the responsibility, I have had fun!

I find it exciting to learn about my students and their experiences. I hope that the information and understanding of the social world that come from the courses I teach will help my students appreciate their experiences and be active participants in their society. I try to challenge my students to think and write more clearly and to ask critical questions of what is presented to them. In each course, I try to include a data gathering and a data analysis experience. My students have observed garage sales, analyzed the impact of McDonald's on many aspects of U.S. culture, recorded stories of immigrant women, and their own family history from an ethnic/religious viewpoint. Three of my sophmore students did independent research projects that they presented as papers at a Wisconsin Sociological meeting. One received first place and another had her paper published in a journal. Regularly, I take my students to jail and send them to the courtroom!

In the 1960's, I lived for a year in a peasant village in the Colombian highlands east of the capital, Bogota, and studied work, family and migration patterns of men and women remaining in the countryside and those settling in the cities. In the early 1970's, I lived and studied for a year in Mexico, and, in the early 1980's, co-directed a research training and research project in the central highlands of Ecuador. Most recently, I spent my sabbatical year at the University of Trondheim, in Norway, doing research on work and gender with members of the Rural Research Center of the Institute of Sociology. I was a founding member of an interdisciplinary group of scholars (mainly historians, sociologists and anthropologists) that hold national and international conferences on rural women. I have been active in several other professional organizations.