Shawn Bingham
Instructor
Contact
Office: CPR 209
Phone: 813/974-2396
Email:
Links
Personal Bio
Growing up, I was given everything a child needs to succeed - loving parents who went to my baseball games and built my confidence, a good education with plenty of support and extra SAT-prep classes, peers who competed to get good grades, and role models who invested their time in me. Yet, through my family life I was given something even more valuable than all of these things – a perspective of social life and social class outside my own. Though I grew up attending a wealthy catholic school, I also grew up watching my father, a minister at a large downtown church, feed and transition homeless families off the street. Even as an adolescent I struggled to determine why I was in my position, while others had a completely different life. I was also fascinated by the fact that the wealthy congregation members of my church, who were charged by their own principles to serve “the poor,” felt ill-at ease around this population. They would rather have given money than serve food and break bread with a “street person.” Even though I was in a position to retreat to a safe and comfortable household, this world taught me at an early age that society valued certain people over others, even certain children, and that I had been afforded certain privileges that would affect me for the rest of my life.
My parents had already learned this lesson, and seeking to share their privileges, they adopted my two brothers, who have Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. Growing up as the youngest, I got weird looks when I would introduce my brothers – they look nothing like me and often behaved, socially, in ways that made others feel uncomfortable. As a child, I just rolled with it; but as a sociologist, I look back and realize that I had a front row seat to observe the way that children and adults – who were equally cruel – classify and attribute value to people based on their physical or mental ability.
Even though I was interested in sociological questions, I did not gravitate toward sociology after high school. Like many siblings of people with disabilities, I pursued a degree in special education. Through this work I was even more intrigued with the way society operates. During my college summers I lived at a large housing complex for adults with severe mental disabilities. Though all of the residents experienced a range of normal emotions – happiness, sadness, anger, jealousy -- their ability to live contently lead me to further question why the so-called “normal people” get caught up in the rat race of life, with our anxiety over status, looks, and money. In many ways, I found these same residents – the ones that society did not want living in their local neighborhoods - to be far more advanced than the average population.
Less interested in the special education classroom than I was in broader social and political questions about disability, I ended up at sociology’s backdoor. Now, not a day goes by that I don’t wonder about the mysteries and mechanics of social life. For example, a week before moving to Florida from Maryland, I was walking my dog in the sailing capital of the United States, Annapolis. For several hours I could not walk more than a few yards without strangers stopping to talk to me and pet my dog. I was in awe that an animal could break down social barriers, and be such a catalyst for social interaction. Had I tried to strike up a conversation on the street with any of these people in the absence of my dog, they probably would have thought that I was quite odd. As a student of sociology, I am fascinated by these daily windows into social life
Aside from musings about everyday social life, my formal research has included the areas of healthcare, sociological theory, pop-culture, and interdisciplinary pedagogy. I have worked on a nation-wide study investigating the healthcare experiences of people with disabilities for the Center for Health and Disability Research, and have also completed an interdisciplinary book that explores the social thought of Henry David Thoreau. Some of my best research, though, happens in the classroom, where I am privileged to not only to hear about the experiences of students who are already fascinated by the sociological perspective, but also to share this way of life with students who have yet to formally look in this direction. Whether the topic is the social obsession with status, or the symbols of masculinity, I enjoy watching the transformation of students as they raise their own questions about society and examine their own backgrounds. As a student, myself, I know that this curiosity has the potential to create a more authentic and conscious life for anyone who is willing to begin the daily explorations that sociology affords.
Current Courses