Date: Tue, 18 Jan 1994 13:09:43 -0500 (EST)
From: VALERIE%MAINE.BITNET@vaxf.Colorado.EDU (Valerie J. Carter)
Subject: Valerie J. Carter.
Name: Valerie J. Carter
Institution: Department of Sociology
             5728 Fernald Hall
             University of Maine
             Orono ME 04469-5728
 
Telephone: (207) 581-2395
EMail: Bitnet: VALERIE @ Maine
      Internet: VALERIE @ Maine.Maine.edu
 
    I have been an assistant professor in the Sociology
Department at the University of Maine since 1986. My primary
interests are in the areas of women and work, workplace and
labor issues, race and ethnicity, social class analysis,
socialist and feminist theory, and gender. My published
work has focused on the effects of office automation on
clerical workers. Currently I am very interested in studying
displaced workers (especially women workers), social change
in the workplace and the economy (e.g., workplace democracy),
and the social construction of race/ethnicity. I also have
interests in occupational health and safety, and in the
sociology of disabilities. As the parent of a child with
autism and other neurological disabilities, I have learned
a lot about the educational/medical systems, societal
stigma attached to people with disabilities, the lack of
support for families, children and parents, and the social
construction of "normality." My decision to place my son in a
nearby small group home has forced me to analyze and theorize about
mothering and parenting. Finally, it has also been very
enlightening to learn how the reward systems of universities
are still very much based on patriarchal models and
unstated assumptions regarding how faculty set their
priorities and use their time and energy.