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Light Carruyo is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Latin American and Latino/a Studies, and she also teaches in and serves on the steering committee of the Women's Studies Program. She received her B.A. from Oberlin College in Women’s Studies and Sociology and her Ph.D. in Sociology from U.C. Santa Barbara. Her primary areas of research are the gendered and racial dimensions of nation building and economic development. She has carried out research in Venezuela, the Dominican Republic and the U.S. Dr. Carruyo is the author of Producing Knowledge, Protecting Forests: Rural Encounters with Gender, Ecotourism, and International Aid in the Dominican Republic, (Penn State University Press 2008), and her articles have appeared in journals such as Latin American Perspectives, and several edited volumes. Her teaching interests center around social justice and include race and racism in global context, Latina/os in the Americas, gender and development, globalization, and critical qualitative methods. Professor Carruyo’s course offerings include “Introduction to Sociology,” and “Introduction to Latin American and Latina/o Studies” at the introductory level. Her intermediate level courses include “Development and Social Change in Latin America” and “Cultures of Globalization.” She also teaches two advanced seminars: “Women, Culture, Development” and “Nation, Race, and Gender in Latin America and the Caribbean.”

William Hoynes is Professor of Sociology and Director of the American Culture Program at Vassar College. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Boston College and joined Vassar's Sociology Department in 1992. His research examines the relationship between mass media and democracy in the United States, with a special focus on the organization and content of public broadcasting. He is the author of Public Television for Sale (Westview Press, 1994), which was awarded the 1995 Goldsmith Book Prize from the Shorenstein Center on Press, Politics, and Public Policy at Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government. He is co-author, with David Croteau, of By Invitation Only: How the Media Limit Political Debate (Common Courage Press, 1994), Media/Society: Industries, Images, and Audiences (Pine Forge Press, 2003), and The Business of Media: Corporate Media and the Public Interest (Pine Forge Press, 2001). He teaches classes on various aspects of contemporary media and culture, including Mass Media and Society; News Media in America; Class, Culture, and Power; and Culture, Commerce, and the Public Sphere.

Marque-Luisa Miringoff is Professor of Sociology at Vassar College and Director of the Institute for Innovation in Social Policy. She received her Ph. D. from the University of Chicago.

Seungsook Moon grew up in Seoul, Korea where she received a B.A. in Sociology at Yonsei University. She received her Ph.D. from Brandeis University in 1994 and taught in Social Studies, the Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Honors Program, at Harvard University from 1993 to 1995.

Since joining the faculty at Vassar College in 1995, Ms. Moon has taught courses on gender and social change in East Asia, women's movements in Asia, social theory, Asian American communities, and food, culture, and globalization. This wide range of courses are connected by underlying focuses on historical and social forces, and informed by critical inquiries of the power/knowledge nexus and the politics of representation necessary to cross-cultural and transnational studies.

Ms. Moon's research interests lie in political and cultural sociology of gender in East Asia with the specific focus on South Korea. She has published numerous articles on nationalism, militarism, civil society and democratization, and globalization. She is the author of Militarized Modernity and Gendered Citizenship in South Korea (Duke University Press, 2005) and a coeditor of Gender & Sexuality in the Global U.S. Military Empire (Duke University Press, forthcoming).

Select Publications:

“Women and Civil Society in South Korea” in Korean Society: Civil Society, Democracy, and the State, 2nd ed. edited by Charles K. Armstrong (Routledge, 2006): 121-143.

“Cambio social y situación de las mujeres en Corea del Sur: Familia, trabajo y politica” (Social change and women’s position in South Korea: family, work, and politics) in Mujeres asiáticas: Cambio social y modernidad (Asian women: Social Change and Modernity), edited by Amelia Sááiz López. Documento CIDOB-Asia, no. 12. Barcelona: Fundación CIDOB, 2006): 24-48.

“Trouble with Conscription, Entertaining Soldiers: Popular Culture and the Politics of Militarized Masculinity in South Korea” Men and Masculinities 8:1 (July 2005): 64-92.

“Immigration and Mothering: Two Generations of Middle-Class Korean Immigrant Women,” Gender & Society 17:6(December 2003): 840-860.

“Redrafting Democratization through Women’s Representation and Participation in the Republic of Korea” in Korea’s Democratization, edited by Samuel S. Kim (Cambridge University Press, 2003): 107-134.

“Imagining a Nation through Differences: Reading the Controversy concerning the Military Service Extra Points System in South Korea,” The Review of
Korean Studies 5:2(December 2002): 73-109.

“Beyond Equality Versus Difference: Professional Women Soldiers in the South Korean Army,” Social Politics: International Studies in Gender, State and Society 9:2(Summer 2002): 212-247.

“Carving Out Space: Civil Society and the Women’s Movement in South Korea,” The Journal of Asian Studies 61:2(May, 2002): 473-500.

“The Production and Subversion of Hegemonic Masculinity: Reconfiguring Gender Hierarchy in Contemporary South Korea,” in Under construction: The Gendering of Modernity, Class, and Consumption in the Republic of Korea, ed. Laurel Kendall (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 2001), pp. 79-113.

“Overcome by Globalization: The Rise of a Women’s Policy in South Korea,” in Korea’s Globalization, ed. Samuel S. Kim (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), pp. 126-46.

“Gender, Militarization, and Universal Male Conscription in South Korea,” in The Women and War Reader, eds. Lois Lorentzen and Jennifer Turpin (New York: New York University Press, 1998), pp. 90-100.

“Begetting the Nation: The Androcentric Discourse of National History and Tradition in South Korea,” in Dangerous Women: Gender and Korean Nationalism , eds. Elaine Kim and Chungmoo Choi (New York: Routledge, 1997), pp. 33-66.

“Eurocentric Elements in the Idea of ‘Surrender-and-Catch’,” Human Studies 16(1993): 305-317.

Leonard Nevarez is an assistant professor in the sociology department. He received his Ph.D. in sociology at the University of California at Santa Barbara in 1999. His research interests are community participation by software, entertainment, and tourism companies, the role of high-technology and the symbolic economy in urban development, environmental/quality-of-life politics, and natural resource extraction industries. Courses he teaches include Corporate Power, Urban Sociology:Building the City (cross-listed in Urban Studies) High-Technology and Society (cross-listed in Science and Technology Studies), IntroductorySociology, Urban Theory (in Urban Studies), and Research Methods. When he is not working, he can often be found listening to music or playing musical instruments.