Biographical Sketch: Mitch Berbrier
I was born in 1961 in Montreal, Quebec, to Jack and Edie Berbrier, and lived there until 1987.
I am an only child who was reared by those two loving parents as well as my grandmother, Alice Wexler, who lived with us.
My dad was a shoe salesman and my mom was a bookkeeper and for most of my formative years they owned and ran our neighborhood children's shoe store, Jack B. Nimble. It paid the bills and my dad was known throughout the neighborhood as Jack B. Nimble -- or to the French customers (who did not apparently share our nursery rhymes) as "Monsieur Nimble." In September 1987, Jack Berbrier died of pancreatic cancer at the age of 58, eight days after my parents' thirty-fifth anniversary.
A few years after my dad died, my mom married Murray Lipson and I gained yet another wonderful family. Mom and Murray were married for close to fourteen years, until Murray died of lung cancer in early 2006. My mom, the bravest woman I know, still lives in Montreal and spends her winters in Florida. In addition to two loving husbands, she has survived breast cancer (2002) and colon cancer (2007).
In 1981 I went to college and, but for a brief hiatus, I still have not left. I began as a student of accounting, earning a Bachelor of Commerce degree, with a Major in Accounting and a Minor in Management Information Systems (McGill 1984). But I found public accountancy to be entirely unsatisfying (to put it mildly). So like so many of my generation, I moved back home (at 22 years old). In my case it was so that I could afford to return to college to acquire a real education. I had come to feel (and still feel) that by focusing only on employability I had deprived myself of a true education during all those years in business school.
Thinking that I might become a clinical psychologist, I earned a second bachelor's degree -- a B.A. in psychology (McGill 1987). It was while pursuing that degree that I finally took my first course in sociology. And that changed my life. I chose another (apparently final) career goal: to become a college professor of sociology. That led me to Indiana University in Bloomington, IN, where I earned M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in sociology (in 1990 and 1996). I taught some courses while an advanced graduate student in Indiana, and spent a year in Milwaukee as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Marquette University (in Milwaukee), while I finished up my dissertation.
In 1996 I began working at the University of Alabama in Huntsville. To my great surprise, Huntsville turned out to be a great place to live, work, and raise a family. I am currently Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology at UAHuntsville.
I teach the following courses: Introduction to Sociology, Sociology of Ethnicity and Race, Sociology of Deviance and Social Control, Sociology of Social Movements, and Sociology of Religion.
My research interests include social constructionist, social historical, and social movement approaches to race, ethnicity, and minority status. In the past, I focused on three groups -- the Deaf, gay males, and white supremacists. My current research project looks at the construction of ethnicity and race in 20th century America by focusing on the symbolic politics and social history of the Cleveland Cultural Gardens. Click here for list of Mitch's publications.
Regarding my profession, I have been most active in the Society for the Study of Social Problems. I have served on the Board of Advisory Editors for the organization's journal, Social Problems (2002-05), as Chair of the Social Problems Theory Division (2006-08) and on the Program Committee for the 59th Annual Meeting of the organization in San Francisco (2009).
I live in Huntsville, and I am lucky enough to be married to Angie Carmody. Angie currently works as a stay-at-home mom, and part time as an American Sign Language Interpreter through the Huntsville Regional Center of the Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind (where she was previously employed as Case Manager for Deaf and Hard of Hearing People). Angie and I were joined on November 11, 2000 by sweet Allie the dog, formerly employed as a Project Director in the home destruction industry, currently working the all-day and all-night shift for Household Security. On November 26, 2003 our daughter Samantha Clare was born with every intention of using her small package to bring large bundles of joy into our lives. Since she did that so perfectly well, we became hooked on kids and decided to have another. Our son Jack Andrew was born June 29, 2006 to critical acclaim, with big plans to emulate his big sister's sweetness. Here they are together.