Biography
My interest in sociology can be traced back to high school in Chicago, where it served as an intellectual context for the fascinating social and cultural changes taking place in the 1960s. I majored in sociology all the way through my doctorate at the University of California at San Diego. My wife, Polly, and I raised three children while I taught at the University of Houston for 30 years and chaired the Department of Sociology. We moved to Wimberley in 2010 to engage in the rich intellectual fervent being generated at Texas State University and to enjoy the peaceful, small town/country lifestyle of the Texas Hill Country.
Research Interests
I am conducting studies of music experiences across the life course, with special attention given to the elderly. I am also conducting funded research on the social-cultural organization of Frontier Medicine, in areas ranging from NASA space flight to to the West Texas Post-Rural areas. I am also examining the relationship of music and science, the social organization of translational bio-medical research, and storytelling as lay ethnography.
Teaching Interests
I love to teach popular music in society, qualitative research methods, the sociology of everyday life, social theory, and the sociology of culture at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. I generally teach graduate seminars in the classroom, and my undergraduate courses online.