Creative Approaches: Faculty Spotlights

Peter Cleary Yeager
Associate Professor of Sociology
Associate Chairman of the Department of Sociology
College of Arts and Sciences

"What I enjoy most about teaching is using current events to generate students’ understanding of sophisticated explanations of the social worlds they inhabit. The dramatic, often seemingly distant facts of crime and punishment are among the most compelling interests in our popular culture, and the challenge for me is to transform our typically simplistic, common sense understandings of them into perceptive analysis of the social institutions that we all share."

"This sort of intellectual transformation risks unsettling students’ tightly held, often unexamined assumptions and even aspects of their identities. My topics necessarily include careful consideration of such sensitive matters as race, gender, and social class—in particular the relations of these categories to behaviors and beliefs—and so they require special care. For example, in my introductory course a freshman, having just considered a social theory of religion, asked worriedly whether it is possible to be a sociologist and still believe in God. (I assured him that it is.) In my law and crime classes, consideration of such topics as those of race and crime, such offenses as date rape, and such punishments as the death penalty, often touch off sensitive discussions as they touch students’ various sensibilities. "

"Encouraging students to speak from their particular assumptive worlds and to treat with respect the varying orientations of their peers, requires me to listen attentively and to model respect for their views regardless of the degree of factual or ethical support for them. This particular teaching skill is always a work-in-progress for me, but to the extent that I succeed in generating student trust in our co-learning process, I am able to open students’ minds to systematic intellectual explanations that challenge their often deeply held misperceptions of social life. I find this outcome the single most rewarding aspect of my work with students."

Peter Cleary Yeager has won awards for teaching excellence in the College Honors Program and for Excellence in Student Advising. He teaches courses in the sociology of law, criminology and criminal justice, and deviancy and social control. He has published books and articles on white-collar crime, environmental law, and business ethics, and has advised the U.S. government on initiatives to examine problems of misconduct in scientific research.

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