Department of Sociology

Dr. Rebecca Marfawtem Amin started teaching with Appalachian State University in January 2023. She also teaches sociology and gerontology at the University of North Georgia. She earned her Ph. D. in Sociology, with specializations in health and life course, and a Masters in Gerontology from Georgia State University. She also has a Doctorat de 3eme Cycle and Masters in Rural Sociology from the University of Yaounde 1, Cameroon, and a Bachelor of Science in Agricultural Economics and Rural Sociology from the Pennsylvania State University. Her research interests include later life migration, identity creation, and the importance of “place” and “home” in the aging process. Her latest publication is “Later Life Employment: Benefits and Challenges Experienced by Older African Immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa Living in Georgia.” She is currently working on a book chapter on immigration.

Courses Taught

• SOC 1110: Sociology of Intimate Relationships
• SOC 3100: Gerontology

Research Interests

• Later Life Migration 
• Identity Creation 
• Aging in Place and the Meaning of Home in the Aging Process

Recent Publications

Amin, R. M. (2024) “Later Life Employment: Benefits and Challenges Experienced by Older Immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa Living in Georgia.” Journal of Elder Policy: 1-14. http://doi.org/10.1002/jey2.12006

Dr. Anna Holleman joined the Sociology faculty in 2024. Her research and teaching interests include religion, health, inequality, and research methods. She received a BA in Psychology from Clemson University, an MDiv from Duke University Divinity School, and a PhD from Duke University. She enjoys teaching introductory sociology courses, and she appreciates the opportunity to help students cultivate their sociological imaginations. She also enjoys teaching research methods courses and applied research courses, especially when she can work alongside students to ask and investigate important social questions. Dr. Holleman’s research focuses on how religion and inequality interact as social determinants of health, as well as how religious organizations and leaders respond to health crises. Her work has been published in JAMA Psychiatry, Social Science & Medicine, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, and Sociology of Religion, among other outlets. 

Courses Taught

• SOC 1000: The Sociological Perspective
• SOC 3885: Research Methods

Research Interests

• Religion
• Health
• Inequality

Recent Publications

Bo-Hyeong, Jane Lee, Anna Holleman, and Rae Jean Proeschold-Bell. 2024. “Stability and Shifts in the Combined Positive and Negative Mental Health of Clergy: A Longitudinal Latent Class and Latent Transition Analysis Study of United Methodist Pastors Before and After the Onset of COVID-19.” Social Science & Medicine 344:116651. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953624000959

Holleman, Anna. 2024. “Programming Provided by Congregations in the United States to Address Mental Illness and Substance Use Disorder.” Journal of Religion and Health 63:551-566. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10943-023-01804-9

Johnston, Erin, Anna Holleman, and Laura Krull. 2023. “‘There’s Theology and Then There’s the People I Love...’: Authority and Ambivalence in Seminarians’ Attitudes Towards Same-Sex Relationships, Marriage, and Ordination.” Sociology of Religion. https://academic.oup.com/socrel/advance-article/doi/10.1093/socrel/srad040/7283023

Dr. Elizabeth Trudeau (she/her) began teaching at Appalachian State in 2023. She received her MA from the University of Chicago and her Doctorate from The University of Notre Dame. Before joining the faculty at App State, she taught at the University of Notre Dame (IN) and Carleton College (MN).

Dr. Trudeau teaches a range of classes and is especially interested in courses that cover methods, criminology, gender, sexuality and culture. Her research examines how and why society attempts to solve social issues related to gender, sex and criminality. Her work explores how the anti-trafficking movement has grown and spread across the United States and how organizational and ideological factors shape it. She has also studied how race and gender impact the experiences of survival sex workers and how women integrate ideas about gender and religion into their lives and has been published in "Sexualities" and the "Journal of Human Trafficking."

She currently serves as the advisor to the App State Sociology Club. She is passionate about supporting students as they discover how their unique interests, skills and social science expertise can positively impact the world around them.

Courses Taught

• SOC 3340: Criminology
• SOC 3885: Research Methods
• SOC 4340: Punishment and Social Control
• SOC 4650: Women, Crime, and the Justice System

Research Interests

• Criminology
• Gender
• Sexuality
• Organizations and Social Fields

Recent Publications

Trudeau, Elizabeth, and Abigail Bartels Jorgensen. 2023 "Saying ‘I Do’ to Feminism: How U.S. Women Manage and Enact Religious and Feminist Identities in their Weddings." Religion and Gender, 13(1), 45-67. doi: 10.1163/18785417-tat00002.

Trudeau, Elizabeth. 2021 “Discontented and Jack of All Trades: Revisiting Male Survival Sex Work Through Modern Sex Work Lenses.” Sexualities, 24(7), 922–940. doi: 10.1177/13634607211026465.

Elizabeth Trudeau, Scott Noble, Sill Davis, Sherman Bryant and Anthony Queen. 2021 “Identifying Trafficking Experience and Health Needs among African American Male Survival Sex Workers.” Journal of Human Trafficking, doi: 10.1080/23322705.2021.1994271.

Dr. Ruth Carmi joined the sociology department at Appalachian State University in 2023. She received her M.A. in Sociology and Ph.D. in Sociology & Peace Studies from the University of Notre Dame, her LL.M in International Legal Studies with a specialization in Human Rights and Gender from American University Washington College of Law and her LL.B in Law & Psychology from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Her research and teaching focus on intersectionality, gender and sexuality, law and society, and peacebuilding. Dr. Carmi especially enjoys teaching courses that focus on inequalities and social concerns and investigate the connection between different systems of inequality, such as gender, race and ethnicity, class, heteronormativity, and militarism. Her courses incorporate an international lens, and she enjoys discussions that connect theory to real-life events. Her previous professional work as a human-rights lawyer in Israel informs her study of the connection between Israeli society's racial formation, gender inequalities, the prolonged Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the decline of the Israeli welfare state.

Courses Taught

• SOC 2850: Constructions of Gender
• SOC 3320: Conflict Resolution, Reconciliation, and Peace
• SOC 4150: Sociology of Law
• SOC 4250: Constructing Bodies and Sexualities
• SOC 4450: Senior Capstone

Research Interests

• Gender
• Peacebuilding
• Law and Society
• Intersectionality

Dr. Rob Freeland joined the Sociology faculty in 2022. He received a BS in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Cal Poly Pomona, an MA in Sociology from UNC Charlotte, and a PhD in Sociology from Duke. His research and teaching interests span social stratification, social psychology, and quantitative methods. His research explores how subjective aspects of society, like status, identity, and cultural meanings, affect inequality by gender, race, and class. His work has been published in the American Sociological Review, Social Psychology Quarterly, and American Behavioral Scientist. His current project centers on occupations and their meanings. One recent paper examined how COVID altered our perceptions of different workers, another examined how the various kinds of work we perform affect the interactions and emotions we are likely to experience in the workplace, and a third examined the perceived gender composition of different occupations and the factors that bias these estimates. He teaches Wealth, Power, & Privilege, Stats, and Applied Sociology, and his favorite course is Sociological Perspective because it allows him to bring sociology to new audiences.

Courses Taught

• SOC 1000: The Sociological Perspective
• SOC 3895: Social Statistics and Data Analysis
• SOC 4390: Applied Sociology
• SOC 4750: Wealth, Power, and Privilege

Research Interests

• Stratification
• Social Psychology
• Quantitative Methods

Recent Publications

Freeland Robert E., Lynn Smith-Lovin, Kimberly B. Rogers, Jesse Hoey, and Joseph M. Quinn. Forthcoming. “Perceived Occupational Gender Composition: A Census and Exploration.” Advances In Group Processes.

Quinn, Joseph M., Robert E. Freeland, Em K. Maloney, Kimberly B. Rogers, and Lynn Smith-Lovin. Forthcoming. “Meaning Change in U.S. Occupational Identities during the COVID-19 Pandemic: Was It Temporary or Durable?” Social Psychology Quarterly

Aidan Combs, Robert E. Freeland, Katelin M. Alfaro Hudak, and Elizabeth A. Mumford. 2023. “The Effect of Occupational Status on Health: Putting the Social in Socioeconomic Status.” Heliyon Cell Press 9(11):e21766 Freeland, Robert E., Deena R. Battista, Michael Polster, Robyn Chae, Nicole Dianno, and Kimberly Frost-Pineda. 2023. "Purchase Intent and Product Appeal of Velo Nicotine Pouches Among Current Tobacco Users and Nonusers of Tobacco." Contributions to Tobacco & Nicotine Research 32(3): 66-76.

Gwendolyn Zugarek earned her B.A. in Sociology and Anthropology from Mansfield University of Pennsylvania and her M.A. in Sociology from Bowling Green State University. Her primary areas of study are demography, health, family, and aging. Before entering the world of Sociology, she worked as a licensed practical nurse. Ms. Zugarek spent two years as the Executive Director of a homeless resource center in Arkansas. There, she used applied sociology to inform her training of volunteers and student interns from various majors to work with those struggling with homelessness in their journeys to stability and to collect data for the organization to present to the local community and municipality. She has traveled to multiple countries, participated in international volunteer work, and completed two study abroad programs while in her undergraduate program. She has taught at four higher education institutions and actively pursues pedagogical and sociological training opportunities to keep her teaching practices current. She is passionate about Sociology and enjoys connecting class material to real life.

Courses Taught

• SOC 1000: The Sociological Perspective
• SOC 1100: Social Problems in American Society
• SOC 2600: Medical Sociology
• SOC 2850: Constructions of Gender

Research Interests

• Family
• Demography
• Health
• Aging

Dr, Jon Gordon is an urban sociologist and ethnographer whose research focuses on violence, crime, and gender in marginalized urban communities. He earned his PhD in Sociology from New York University in 2021. He is currently working on his first book, which follows a criminalized group of men who engaged in violence, operated drug markets, and worked with residents to push forward a vision of change in their community in Medellín, Colombia. In a second project, Jon and colleagues leverage an original dataset to refine a constellation theory of rampage school shootings and advance an analytical approach to rampage attacks, school shootings, and mass shootings. In other projects, Jon and student collaborators examine racial discomfort in undergraduate classrooms and how Mom Influencers and audiences co-construct feminist discourse on TikTok. In his classes, Jon empowers students to see themselves as “producers of knowledge" as they carry out original research and apply sociological concepts to make sense of the challenges faced in their day-to-day lives.

Courses Taught

• SOC 2850: Constructions of Gender
• SOC 3340: Criminology
• SOC 3345: Communities and Crime
• SOC 4450: Senior Capstone

Research Interests

• Community and Urban Sociology
• Crime
• Ethnography
• Gender
• Violence

Recent Publications

Gordon, Jon. 2020. “The Legitimation of Extrajudicial Violence in an Urban Community.” Social Forces, 98(3):1174-95.

Dr. Johnnie Lotesta is a political and cultural sociologist with interests in political parties, labor and social movements, the sociology of knowledge, and American politics. She received her PhD in Sociology from Brown University in 2019 and was a Democracy Postdoctoral Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance & Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School from 2019 to 2021. Johnnie's current book project, Rightward in the Rustbelt, uses political contests over right-to-work laws in the Industrial Midwest as a window into understanding the current crisis of representation in American Democracy – that is, the tendency of partisan lawmakers to pursue policy programs that do not align with the interests and preferences of voting publics. Johnnie has also published research based on a mixed-methods qualitative study of youth-led social movement organizations (SMOs), examining how such SMOs are fusing issue-based organizing with voter engagement campaigns to mobilize the youth vote, impacting young activists’ political beliefs and behaviors in the process. Her research has appeared in scholarly outlets such as Research in Political Sociology. American Journal of Cultural Sociology, and Journal of Community Psychology, as well as numerous public-facing research reports, op-eds, and book reviews. Johnnie enjoys teaching App State’s Political Sociology, Social Movements, Wealth Power & Privilege, and The Sociological Perspective courses. Believing that we learn best by doing, Johnnie's courses feature multiple opportunities to apply sociology to the world around us through activities like in-class debates, case studies, and op-ed assignments.

Courses Taught

• SOC 1000: The Sociological Perspective
• SOC 3650: Political Sociology
• SOC 4250: Social Movements
• SOC 4750: Wealth, Power, and Privilege

 Research Interests

• Political Sociology
• Labor & Social Movements
• Sociology of Knowledge
• Comparative-Historical Sociology

Recent Publications

Graizbord, Diana and Johnnie Lotesta. Forthcoming. “Knowledge & Knowledge-Actors in Comparative-Historical Political Sociology.” The Oxford Handbook of Comparative Historical Sociology, edited by Rebecca Jean Emigh and David M. McCourt. New York: Oxford University Press.

Conner, Jerusha, Johnnie Lotesta, and Rachel Stannard*. 2023. “Intersectional Politicization: A Facet of Youth Activists’ Sociopolitical Development.” Journal of Community Psychology 51:1345-1364. http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/jcop.22941.

Lotesta, Johnnie and Cedric de Leon. 2020. “Political Parties: From Reflection to Articulation and Beyond.” Pp. 646-665 In The New Handbook of Political Sociology, edited by Thomas Janoski, Cedric de Leon, Joya Misra, and Isaac W. Martin. New York: Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108147828.025.

Lotesta, Johnnie. 2019. “The Myth of the Business-Friendly Economy: Making Neoliberal Reforms in the Worst State for Business.” American Journal of Cultural Sociology 7(2): 214–245. https://doi.org/10.1057/s41290-018-0058-x.

Lotesta, Johnnie. 2017. “The Strength of Civil Society Ties: Explaining Party Change in America’s Bluest State.” Research in Political Sociology 24: 257-287. https://doi.org/10.1108/s0895-993520160000024009.

Dr. Joseph Jakubek is a sociologist of communities who joined the faculty in the Department of Sociology in 2019. His previous professional research focused on social and economic development strategies in rural spaces, but he now commits most of his efforts at App State to teaching and student mentoring. He also serves as the Internship Coordinator for all sociology majors and helps students find, plan for, and succeed in internships and career preparation.

Courses Taught

• SOC 1000: The Sociological Perspective
• SOC 1100: Social Problems in American Society
• SOC 2001: Sociological Pathways
• SOC 2060: Religion and Society
• SOC 3710: Sociology of Appalachian Communities
• SOC 4390: Applied Sociology Seminar
• SOC 5350: Contemporary Social Issues

Research Interests

• Social and Economic Development
• Rural Communities

Recent Publications

Jakubek, Joseph. 2024. Review of "Food Power Politics: The food story of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement." by Bobby J. Smith II. The University of North Carolina Press. 2023. Published in Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.

Jakubek, Joseph. 2024. Review of "W.E.B. Du Bois: Pioneer American Sociologist." by Robert. A Wortham. Lexington Books. 2022. Published in Sociation 22(2).

Jakubek, Joseph, and Spencer D. Wood. 2018. "Emancipatory Empiricism: The Rural Sociology of W.E.B. Du Bois." Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 4(1):14-34.

Jakubek, Joseph , and Cornelia Butler Flora. 2017. "Biofuels in an Age of Cheap Oil: Community Capitals and Motivations to Participate in Biodiesel Value Chains". Perspectives on Global Development and Technology. 16(4):410-433.

Jennifer is a native of Watauga County and 1996 graduate of App State.  She began as Office Manager in the sociology department in 2018 after being employed in other areas on campus.   In her spare time she enjoys traveling, reading nonfiction and cheering on the Tarheels.