Peter Marina
Associate Professor
Sociology
437K Wimberly Hall
608.785.6770
pmarina@uwlax.edu
Specialty area(s)
Urban Ethnography, Criminology, Transgressive Sociology, Sociology of City Life, Hispanic immigration, Sociology of Religion, race and ethnicity, among other topics.
Brief biography
Dr. Peter Marina’s approach to sociology incorporates the striking dialectic of history and biography that allows him to penetrate and interact with a wide range of culturally diverse social groups — from public high school youths and street kids, to police officers and Hispanic immigrants, to religiously inspired residents of the inner-city and charismatic religious leaders in the Caribbean, and most recently, to down and out urban dwellers — in a quest to make sense both empirically and theoretically of this rapidly changing, surprising and highly contradictory late-modern world.
Current courses at UWL
Social Problems (120); Sociological Foundations (200); Sociology of City Life (319); Delinquency (321); Criminology (322); Qualitative Explorations (416, Capstone)
Teaching history
Deviance; Urban Sociology; Sociology of Conflict; Power, Ideology, and Social Movements; Qualitative Methods in Social Research; Problems in Urban Community; Ethnic and Minority Relations; Sociological Writing; Masculinities; Women's and Gender Studies; Independent Studies
Professional history
Visiting Research Scholar. University of New Orleans
(Research on Transgressive Sociology)
Visiting Summer Lecturer. University of New Orleans (Criminology - 4921)
Visiting Professor. University of Missouri – St. Louis
Lecturer. City University of New York (John Jay College of Criminal Justice)
Research and publishing
ACADEMIC BOOKS
Down & Out in New Orleans: Transgressive Living in the Informal Economy. Columbia University Press (September 5, 2017).
Chasing Religion in the Caribbean: Ethnographic Journeys from Antigua to Trinidad. Palgrave Macmillan (September 2, 2016).
Getting the Holy Ghost: Urban Ethnography in a Brooklyn Pentecostal Tongue-Speaking Church (Originally published March 2013; New paperback edition published – October 31, 2014: Lexington Books).
(Under Contract) New Hispanic Places: Immigration, Revitalization, and Urban Change in Post-Industrial New Jersey (with David Gladstone). Routledge Press.
EDUCATIONAL BOOKS
Social Problems: Field Research Workbook. (Kendall Hunt Publishing: ISBN 978-1-4652-9585-9).
SAMPLE ACADEMIC ARTICLES
“Buskers of New Orleans: Transgressive Sociology in the Urban Underbelly.” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography (first published on August 2, 2016).
"Becoming a God Hunter Towards Conversion in a Brooklyn Tongue-Speaking Church." Social Compass 2016, Vol. 63(1) 76–92.
ARTICLES OUTSIDE ACADEMIA
“Diversity Makes Us Better.” La Crosse Tribune and Chippewa Herald (February 12, 2017)
“Broken-windows Policing is Failed Policy.” La Crosse Tribune (November 4, 2015)
“County's Juvenile Arrest Rate Hurting our Kids.” La Crosse Tribune (April 26, 2015)
“Hispanic Community Strengthens Community.” La Crosse Tribune (October 8, 2014)
Book Series Editor
2016-2020. Series Editor: Ethnographies of Religion (A New Series from Lexington Books).
Education
Ph.D., Sociology: New School for Social Research, New York, New York
M.A., Sociology: University of New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana
B.A., Education: University of New Orleans, New Orleans, Louisiana