New Faculty Profile

Deborah Little
(Assistant Professor, Department of Anthropology and Sociology)

A brief overview of your area of expertise, research and teaching.

My background is in both law and sociology. I have a law degree and practiced for several years as a legal aid attorney and then as a social security disability attorney. I often say that my practical experience in the legal trenches has fed my sociological research interests. My experience with legal aid led to my interests in gender, poverty, and welfare and my dissertation examined welfare reform and struggles between welfare-reliant women and welfare-to-work staff over issues of welfare, need, dependency, and motherhood. My experience with social security disability led to a 2-year post-doc research fellowship through the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the opportunity to study the struggle for independent living by people with disabilities. In general, I guess you could say that I am interested in the relationships between citizens and the state, particularly as they are constructed by gender, race, class and disability and by ideologies about work and need.

Here at Adelphi I am filling the sociology of law position. I am lucky to be working with Dr. Stephanie Lake and others on the new Criminal Justice program for sociology and ABLE students. We are developing new courses and a new major designed to provide a broad social science background to those interested in working in the field of criminal justice. Many students have already expressed interest in the program, so that is really exciting. My courses in Sociology of Law and Social Inequality and Law, fall under the rubric of Criminal Justice.

In addition, I've had fun teaching introductory sociology and the social research methods class. Next fall I'm developing a class on gender and carework. One thing I love about being here is that I have the opportunity to teach courses in all of my areas of interest!

Why did you come to Adelphi?

Two reasons: first, I wanted to teach in a liberal arts university. I was very impressed with the people I met here (faculty and administration), with the enthusiasm of the students, and with the overall positive feeling. I also like the fact that the faculty here like each other. I've spent much of my life around universities and that is not always the case. Second, I wanted to be in the greater New York area for family reasons. So the opportunity to teach here was very welcome.

What has been your experience so far?

My experience to date has been wonderful. My impressions from the interview have been confirmed - Adelphi offers friendly and supportive faculty and administration, eager and curious students, and a feeling of energy and commitment to intellectual growth. It's a terrific place and I'm delighted to be here.

What do you wish to contribute? What do you wish to impart to your students?

I'd like to become a really great teacher. I'd like my students to take away a different way of looking at the world and their own lives. I'd like them to think sociologically about the many pressing issues in their lives. For example, I hope that students in the criminal justice program will think about structural inequality more than individual deviance. I'd like to have a career at Adelphi that is rich in thought, human connection, and social justice. I hope that my research will contribute to such a world and that my teaching will inspire students to lead such a life.