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, a New Orleans native, is a PhD graduate of the New School for Social Research in Manhattan, and author of Down and Out in New Orleans: Transgressive Living in the Informal Economy (Columbia University Press, 2017), among other books. As a sociologist and criminologist, Marina writes about new and emergent forms of transgression in our highly contradictory late-modern social world. His 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 around the world — from inner-city youths and street kids, to urban street performers and willful outsiders on the social fringes of the metropolis, to religiously inspired residents of the inner-city and urban occultists and Satanists, and most recently, to down and out urban dwellers — in a quest to make sense both empirically and theoretically of this rapidly changing, surprising but always fascinating world.
Current courses at UWL
Social Problems (120); Sociological Foundations (200); Sociology of City Life (319); Delinquency (321); Criminology (322); Qualitative Explorations (416, Capstone)
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
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). http://www.wwno.org/post/tripod-xtras-peter-marina-podcast-edit
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).