Jacob Heller, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor and Chair, Sociology Department

Building: Academic Village

Room: Tower C-2, Room C-320 

Office Hours: Tue/Thu 1:30-2:30 p.m., and by appointment

Phone: 516-876-3336, x2 (doesn't work reliably)

Fax: 516-876-3491

E-mail: hellerj@oldwestbury.edu

Homepage: http://triton.oldwestbury.edu/~hellerj/

Facebook: http://oldwestbury.facebook.com/profile.php?id=79201553

Professor Heller received his Ph.D. in Sociology from SUNY at Stony Brook in May of 2001.  He completed an M.A. in Sociology in 1995, and a B.A. in History (Biology minor) in 1985, both from SUNY at Stony Brook. He also attended Boston University and McGill University as an undergraduate, and did graduate work in Culture and Policy Studies at SUNY Empire State College.  Courses he has taught (or will soon teach) at SUNY College at Old Westbury include:
 

SY 2500 Introductory Sociology SY 2570 Statistics for Social Science SY 3550 Social Problems SY 3770 Family and Society SY 4280 Social Inequality SY 4520 Methods of Sociological Research

SY 4540 Contemporary Sociological Theory CR 4550 Theories of Crime SY 4750 Medical Sociology SY 5990 Senior Seminar in Sociology FY 1000 Crime & Punishment FY 1000 Science, Religion & Knowledge

He serves as the faculty advisor to the dormant Marx Society student club, is Chair of the Labor-Management Professional Development Committee, is a faculty Director (and officer - Secretary) of the Old Westbury Auxiliary Services Corporation and co-organizer (with Prof. Quirke) of the "Brown Bag" Faulty Research Colloquium series. He is an affiliated member of Stony Brook University's Initiative for Historical Social Sciences. His recent publications and professional presentations include:

The Vaccine Narrative, (2008) Nashville TN: Vanderbilt University Press. “Mobilizing Against Vaccination Mandates: The case of NY Assembly Bill 9988-A,” National Social Science Journal. Vol. 25, No. 1 (2005), pp. 77-84. “Mill, Marx, Race and American Labor Exceptionalism,” Perspectives Journal. Vol. 27, No. 1 (2005), pp. 25-32. “Rubella Vaccine and Medical Policy-Making: Fetal rights and women's health,” New England Journal of Public Policy. Vol. 16, No. 1 (Fall/Winter, 2000), pp. 117-38.

“Conflicting Narratives: African Americans, Tuskegee and a Preventive HIV/AIDS Vaccine,” 103rd annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Boston; (August 2008). “Narratives of Distrust: African Americans, HIV-AIDS and Vaccines,” 78th annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society, New York; February 2008. “Evolving Cultural Narratives: Vaccines and profit in the 21st century,” 102nd American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, New York; August 2007. “Using ‘Path Dependency’ as a Method in Historical Research,” Qualitative Methodology Panel, 101st American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, Montreal, Canada; August, 2006. “How to Explain Vaccine Success: Science, Institutions, or ‘Path Dependency’,” 37th IIS Congress, Stockholm, Sweden, July 2005.

His research interests include research methods, medical sociology, the sociology of science, historical sociology, narrative analysis and gender studies.