Hello, and welcome to the Winter 2010 edition of the Member Profiles section of the SARAH newsletter!
In this edition, we introduce you to Daniel Howard, a sociology graduate student at the University of Delaware interested in environments, structure, and evaluation, and one of the Member Profiles co-editors Alana Van Gundy, an Assistant Professor in the Criminal Justice Program at Miami University in Ohio.
We choose people to profile using a random number generator (really!), but if you have suggestions for DWC members or significant contributors to the field of women and crime that you would like to see profiled, please contact Venezia Michalsen at michalsenv@mail.montclair.edu This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or Alana Van Gundy at yoderal@muohio.edu This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it . We would enjoy hearing from you!
Until next edition,
Alana and Venezia
DANIEL HOWARD
How did you become interested in the field of women and/or gender and crime?
I have been interested in criminology since college, but I didn’t really connect with gender as a field of study until the second year of my Ph.D. program. A few outstanding professors hit me with the gender literature, particularly the literature on gender as a social structure and the intersectionality stuff, and it sunk in. It was like seeing the hidden picture in a stereogram. All of a sudden a whole new dimension of the world appeared.
How do you define yourself as a scholar/activist/educator?
I am interested in how environments like neighborhoods or organizations present individuals with a structured system of opportunities for action. I’m particularly interested in how environments set up routines and pathways to steer people toward certain outcomes and how individuals circumvent those routines and pathways when necessary. That’s part of the appeal of both criminology and gender studies.
I like evaluation research because it provides a window into the dynamic between behavior and context. I like using data to help worthwhile programs improve. Plus, I like gathering data because I like knowing the strengths and limitations of the data I am working on. In the end, I like the framework of evaluation because the goal is to take a microcosm and examine as much of it as possible- process and outcome, staff and client, beginning and end, ideals and funding. That’s tougher to do with research projects of a larger scale.
What are your current projects or interests?
At the moment I’m working on a suicide prevention project for Delaware. It has been sad and strange to watch suicide in the news; I never realized how much of it there was or how often I just pretended it wasn’t there. I also never realized how often gender and sexuality played a role in suicide, and how often the social-structural elements of gender and sexuality get whitewashed as individual-level psychological imbalance.
Who is your favorite person (or animal!) to spend time with, and what are your favorite things to do when you are with them?
I totally took my wife for granted before we had kids. Now, one of my favorite things to do is zone out on the couch with her and do Sudoku puzzles in the glorious post-bedtime silence.
How do you wind down after a stressful day?
If I get really lucky and score some free time I work on something musical. At the moment I’m trying to overlay a Rodrigo y Gabriela song with a Mozambique rhythm and practicing up on the banjo for the Ron Akers Bluegrass Band performance in San Francisco.
What obstacles do you feel you have overcome to be where you are today?
I’ve met some people with some fairly epic life stories. Mine’s not really one of those.
What would you like to be remembered for?
I think I’d like to be remembered as someone who made life interesting. I get a charge out of having good conversations, playing live music, teaching interesting topics, and all those other connective moments in life.
What is one of your lifelong goals
I’d like to finish a mystery novel and an album. I know that seems like two goals, but it’s not. I love playing music and I love writing fiction. I want to get to a point in my life where I’ve produced at least one completed album and one completed novel that would be good enough for popular consumption. It’s really amazing to me how much craft actually goes into some of those pop-fiction and pop-music projects.
Is there a website where we can send people for more information about you?
ALANA VAN GUNDY
How did you become interested in the field of women and/or gender and crime?
I would say by accident, but I believe that all things happen for a purpose. My educational and occupational background is in criminal justice but for my PhD I took a different direction and went into a Sociology program. I was literally devastated at the viewpoints of the faculty and students when I switched degrees and the mindset in my new program was beyond incomprehensible to me. I will never forget the book that I read in my very first graduate course in Sociology. It was a book justifying reasons as to why men rape. In my mind, there wasn’t (and isn’t) a single justification as to why rape would occur. What was worse is every single student in the course agreed with the premises of the book and no one questioned its validity. Anytime I spoke up in outrage, I was silenced both by other students and the faculty member. This was my first introduction to how women are vilified based upon their gender, and sadly, it was amongst a population that claimed to be gender-neutral! Throughout my graduate program, I learned to go my own direction with the research, keep my opinion to myself, and document all of the ways that women either in the program, or in my specific field of interest (corrections) were degraded, demoralized, blamed, and neglected. Fighting for justice and fairness is at the core of who I am, and I could not ignore what I had seen or experienced through my own educational journey or my experiences within our correctional facilities. Through my writing, advocacy, and research, I have found it my personal responsibility to stand up and speak for those who cannot do so for themselves. To me, there are few greater populations that needs spoken for then the women that we have within our nation’s correctional facilities.
How do you define yourself as a scholar/activist/educator?
I’m not sure I can define myself here. I do know that I don’t want to simply do my job, but I want to apply what I/we know and learn to everyday life. I don’t want to just get my research done, but I want to provide research that will change public policy. I wouldn’t want to call attention to something and just move on. I don’t want to teach students without educating them on how they should use new knowledge to carry with them every day, to apply it to what they do/think/say, and to critically think about the state of our (and their) world. So I guess I would just say that I would define myself as someone who through research, activism, and education, promotes application, advocacy, and change.
What are your current projects or interests?
Like everyone else in academics, I have multiple projects going on right now. They all revolve around female criminality, assessing the Inside Out Prison Exchange experience and online pedagogy.
Who is your favorite person (or animal!) to spend time with, and what are your favorite things to do when you are with them?
My favorite place to be is around anything with four legs. I connect very deeply with animals, and like them because they are always there for you, they don’t talk back, and they love you even in your Ben and Jerry days! While the responsibility of caring for them is tremendously great, I would be lost without knowing that I have to provide love, shelter, and food for all of my critters. Loving them (and adding rescue animals as I find them!!!) seems to add to my purpose in life.
How do you wind down after a stressful day?
Depends on how stressful the day is! I am not used to winding down, but amping up because that is what drives me. I would say that one of the things that brings me peace would be working on anything outside. Gardening, riding horses, splitting wood, hiking, riding motorcycles, building stuff – anything where there are no ringing phones, clanging computers, and people telling me what I should do, or have to do, or even who I am supposed to be! Another thing that I have been known to do is cook. I love to cook and bake and when I am the most stressed I cook, bake, can, and make chocolate until my kitchen counter is so full my entire family couldn’t go through the food in a week!
What obstacles do you feel you have overcome to be where you are today?
I have overcome, and continue to overcome, so many obstacles that I could write a manuscript on this question. But this is also a very private topic for me, and what is important is that I have learned that no matter what physical, emotional, or mental obstacle that is presented to me, I somehow end up climbing over them. And on the other side, I’m always stronger than I was before.
What would you like to be remembered for?
My compassion, integrity, loyalty, and passion. Without these things I would just as soon not exist. If I cannot sense and respond to others pain, if someone cannot believe the words I speak, if they cannot know that I will fight for what is right regardless of what it costs me personally, or know that I mean what I say and say what I mean, I would be tremendously disappointed in myself. These characteristics are qualities that are polarizing and people often either love me or hate me. I have learned that what matters most to me is that at the end of the day, if I have not continued to show and develop these qualities – then I have no room to stand up and demand that people treat others right.
What is one of your lifelong goals?
My lifelong goal is to situate myself in a position in life that will enable me to help those that are the most vulnerable through a multitude of ways (research, advocacy, service, and most of all public policy).