James Cavendish
Associate Professor
Contact
Office: CPR 225
Phone: 813/974-2633
Email:
Links
Personal Bio
What does a predominantly Black neighborhood do when drug dealers that threaten to tear the community apart overtake its streets? How can women, racial minorities, or gays and lesbians find a home in a church which some believe has been, or continues to be, hostile toward their rights, sense of self, and collective identities? How can religious leaders mobilize their faithful to take a stand against discrimination, unjust social structures, or polarizing denominational policies? These are just a few of the questions I've explored in my research over the last several years.
Most of my research to date deals with religiously based social activism. Because this research is guided as much by my own personal background and experiences as by my intellectual interests, the subject of many of my articles is the Catholic Church and the communities within that work for change. I've examined how Christian communities fought for human rights in Latin America, how women's groups, racial minorities, and gays and lesbians struggle for full inclusion in the U.S. Catholic Church, and how religious leaders work for racial justice on behalf of the communities they represent. Perhaps the most significant and original of these research projects has been my dissertation work, which investigates the role of Black Catholic parishes in revitalizing inner city communities. In the context of that research, I examined the strategies of an activist church on the south side of Chicago and discovered the profoundly religious ways its pastor made appeals for his parishioners to become involved in the church's crusade against drug dealers and alcohol advertisers. Because many of the parishioners who joined the crusade saw their activism as a form of evangelism, this research underscored the fundamental importance of religion in religiously based activism.
During my years at USF, I have supervised Master's theses and portfolios on a variety of topics, including how the religiosity of African Americans influences community participation, new church growth among Evangelicals in Central Florida, and the predictors of binge drinking on college campuses. I have also advised students researching such topics as gay men's identity construction, body image ideals as reflected in printed personal advertisements, and media construction of African-American males as violent criminals in local television news. I teach courses on the topics of race and ethnicity, religion, social movements, and research methods. Through a course titled "SPSS and Social Research," I provide graduate students from a variety of majors with practical experience using computer software to process and analyze data.
My interests in these areas of research and teaching intersect with the missions of a variety of programs on the USF campus. I have been active for some time now in USF's Institute for Black Life and the College of Arts and Sciences' Community Initiative. I participated in organizing the "University as Citizen Conference" hosted by USF, and with the assistance of members of the Community Initiative, I edited a special USF issue of a journal devoted to fostering the civic engagement of universities. I also participated in the Florida Campus Compact's Service Learning Institute held in Orlando, which led me to develop a service-learning component for my Racial and Ethnic Relations course. Over the last year, at the request of the Provost's Office, I've been serving USF as the principal investigator of the 2002 Campus Climate Survey, a campus-wide survey designed to measure the degree to which our campus is perceived by members of faculty and staff to be a diverse, comfortable, and inclusive campus atmosphere for all its members. Because I will use the data gathered from the survey as a tool for teaching graduate students how to clean, code, and analyze data, this project represents an ideal way to bring research and teaching together in the service of the university.
Beyond USF and the local community, I'm involved in a variety of national associations that share my interests in religion, race and ethnicity, and social movements. Among these are the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the Association for the Sociology of Religion, and the Religious Research Association. I've also been working for the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops in conducting a nationwide survey of diocesan Offices of Black Ministry to determine the extent of, and successes with, inclusion of Blacks in all aspects of the Church's life. The USF community and its Department of Sociology provide a solid foundation for pursuing these and other research projects that speak to the concerns of our society’s key institutions.
Education
Ph.D.,University of Notre Dame, 1997
Current Courses