Featured Faculty: Diane Nititham

 

Dr. Diane Sabenacio Nititham came to Murray State in the fall of 2015. She is an Assistant Professor of Sociology in the Department of Political Science and Sociology. Before arriving in Murray, she taught at National Louis University in Chicago as an Assistant Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences and taught adjunct courses at DePaul University in the College of Education and College of Communication. She served as a Visiting Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, where she was awarded “Recognition for Exemplary Undergraduate Teaching.” She received her PhD in Sociology at University College Dublin in 2010 and an MA with distinction in Social and Cultural Foundations in Education from DePaul University in 2005.

Dr. Nititham has taught Introduction to Sociology, Popular Culture, Sociology of Education, and a special topics course called Migration and Diaspora. In the special topics course, she enjoyed working with her students to produce digital stories. Students wrote autoethnographic narratives, conducted literature reviews, gathered photographs and videos on their topic, and produced a digital story and accompanying blog. Her other teaching interests include social inequality, race and ethnicity, and globalization. She loves not only working with students in the classroom, but also in other activities such as Students of Sociology Club and the residential colleges, where she is a Board Member for White College.

Dr. Nititham’s research interests focus on the intersecting dynamics of migration, transnational social practices, and globalization. She is interested in how these intersections take shape alongside historical and contemporary relationships for immigrant communities. She has been active in presenting in interdisciplinary scholarly venues nationally and internationally and translates research into publication. She has been invited for a number of talks, among them the Mícheál Ó Cléirigh Institute for the Study of Irish History & Civilization Summer School in Leuven, Belgium; the Women’s Resource Center and the Division for Interdisciplinary Race and Gender Studies at San Jose State University; the Celtic Section and the Swedish Institute for North American Studies at Uppsala University in Sweden; and most recently at Catholic University of America and for the Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month Series at Dartmouth College.

Her most recent publication is a solo-authored book, Making Home in Diasporic Communities: Transnational Belonging Amongst Filipina Migrants (Routledge 2016). The book focuses on the social practices and symbolic enactments of “home” for Filipina migrants and how their experiences are shaped by the dynamics of language, religion, and food as practices of home-making. The book looks at the factors that position Filipinas within Irish society and those which affect their relationship to Filipino communities in the Philippines, Ireland, and the United States. She argues that the experience of Filipinas raises larger questions of inclusion and exclusion for diasporic communities as they “make home”.

Other recent publications include the co-edited book Heritage, Diaspora and the Consumption of Culture: Movements in Irish Landscapes (2014), and “‘It’s Still Home Home’: Notions of the Homeland for Filipina Dependent Students in Ireland’ in Transnational Migration and Asia: The Question of Return (2014). Other works have appeared in Teaching Sociology, The Malaysian Journal of Economic Studies, and Translocations: The Irish Migration, Race and Social Transformation Review.

The College of Humanities and Fine Arts is honored that Dr. Nititham is a member of our faculty. We would like to congratulate her on excelling in the classroom and on her recent book publication!