Faculty Profile

Kevin Neuhouser

Kevin Neuhouser

Professor of Sociology, Co-Chair Sociology Department

Email: neuhous@spu.edu
Phone: 206-281-2276
Office: Alexander Hall 308


Education: PhD, Indiana University; MA, Indiana University; BA, Taylor University. At SPU since 1996.

After graduating from Taylor University in 1980 with a double major in Sociology and Political Science, Dr. Kevin Neuhouser spent three years coordinating a community development project with the Mennonite Central Committee in an urban squatter settlement in Recife, Brazil. This experience has shaped his research and teaching interests, which are centered in the topics of poverty, gender, social movements, and culture. After earning a doctorate in Sociology at Indiana University in 1990, Dr. Neuhouser taught at the University of Washington before coming to Seattle Pacific University in 1996.

Since coming to SPU, Dr. Neuhouser has taught many of the Sociology classes with interdisciplinary connections with other programs, such as Women’s Studies, History, Latin American Studies, Global Development Studies, and Reconciliation Studies.

In addition, he has taught the introductory course in SPU’s honors program — UScholars — since 2002. And for the past decade he has been leading summer student trips overseas. In addition to serving as co-chair of the Department of Sociology, he also is the faculty advisor for two student clubs.


Selected publications

McKinney, Jennifer, and Kevin Neuhouser. “Divided by Gender: How Sociology Can Help.” Cultural Encounters: A Journal for the Theology of Culture 9(1) (2013): 38-55.

Neuhouser, Kevin.  “ ‘I am the Man and the Woman in this House’: Brazilian Jeito and the Strategic Framing of Motherhood in a Poor, Urban Community.”  In Identity Work: Negotiating Sameness and Difference in Activist Environments, edited by Jo Reger, Daniel J. Myers, and Rachel L. Einwohner.  University of Minnesota Press: Minneapolis, 2008.

Neuhouser, Kevin.  “If I Had Abandoned My Children: Mobilization and Commitment to the Identity of Mother.”  Social Forces.  1998, 77(1):331-58.

Neuhouser, Kevin.  “Democratic Stability in Venezuela:  Elite Consensus or Class Compromise?”  American Sociological Review. 1992, 57(1):117-135.

Neuhouser, Kevin.  “The Radicalization of the Brazilian Catholic Church in Comparative Perspective. American Sociological Review.  1989, 54(2):233-244.

Books Authored  

Modern Brazil, McGraw-Hill, 1999.

 

Please view Kevin Neuhouser’s CV for further information.

Why I Teach at SPU

Kevin Neuhouser, Professor of Sociology

“I teach because I love learning and I love empowering students by helping them better understand the social world that has shaped them so that they are prepared to reshape that world into one where God’s justice and grace can grow. I believe that sociology is a Christian calling because it can help us live more faithfully in a beautifully complicated  and hurting world.”