Retired and Emeritus Faculty
John A. Busch, PhD
Associate Professor Emeritus
Dr. Busch retired from UofL in 2018 after 44 years of service. During that time, he studied general systems theory and sociocybernetics as a philosophical basis for sociological theory. Using that systems framework, he was engaged in developing theoretical approaches to the understanding of social systems in general, which necessitated inquiries into the social construction of reality, political economy, inequality, and the reciprocal influences of self and society. In particular these have led to the investigation of authoritarian disposition, cults and the dynamics of religiosity, racial and gender inequality, formal organizations, information societies and globalization, and the overall dynamics of inequality in the U.S. as an outlier among all post-industrial nations.
Patricia Gagné, PhD
Professor Emerita
Dr. Gagné retired as a professor of sociology in 2022 after 30 years of service at UofL. Her research focused on gender and included numerous articles on intimate partner violence, transgenderism, women and body work, and the personal and social benefits women derive from serious edgework leisure. She taught undergraduate and graduate level theory courses, graduate qualitative methods, and a graduate course on gender and sexuality in recent years. She served on and supervised numerous master's and dissertation committees, winning the 2013 School of Interdisciplinary and Graduate Studies' Outstanding Faculty Mentor of Masters Students award, and served twice as the Department's Director of Graduate Studies.
Cynthia L. Negrey, PhD
Professor Emerita
Dr. Negrey retired from UofL in 2019 after 31 years of service. In 2020 she relocated to northeast Ohio. She can still be reached at cynthia.negrey@louisville.edu. She started at UofL in 1988 immediately after receiving her doctorate from Michigan State University. Her specialty areas are political economy, urban labor markets, and gender. She taught undergraduate courses in Diversity and Inequality, Industrial Sociology, Sociology of Work, and Urban Sociology; graduate electives in Qualitative Methods, Sociology of Work, and Urban Sociology; and a course required for Ph.D. students entitled Fundamental Assumptions of Sociology. She also had a formal affiliation with the PhD program in Urban and Public Affairs and taught Urban Theory there for many years. Dr. Negrey served as Chair of the Sociology Department from 2010-2015.
She is the author of two books, Work Time: Conflict, Control, and Change (Cambridge, UK: Polity, 2012) and Gender and Reduced Work (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1993) and is the lead or subordinate co-author of articles in City & Community; Feminist Economics; Gender, Place and Culture; International Journal of Urban and Regional Research; Journal of Poverty; Journal of Urban Affairs; Regional Studies; and Urban Affairs Quarterly/Review. She contributed entries on the eight-hour workday and the temporal dimensions of women’s and men’s employment to Sociology of Work: An Encyclopedia (Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE, 2013). An essay on manufacturing decline and economic change in Buffalo, NY, a return to her roots in the study of deindustrialization, accompanies the “Working People” series in The Social Documentary Photography of Milton Rogovin, edited by Christopher Fulton (Lexington, KY: University of Kentucky Press, 2019).
Dr. Negrey took a two-year leave of absence from the University of Louisville in 1999-2001 during which time she was a study director at the Institute for Women’s Policy Research in Washington, DC. There she led a team that researched and co-authored a book-length report entitled Working First but Working Poor: The Need for Education and Job Training Following Welfare Reform. She has also been a consultant and co-author with colleagues in the Kent School of Social Work on reports and articles on welfare reform in Kentucky. (Selected Publications)
Wayne M. Usui, PhD
Professor Emeritus
Dr. Usui retired from UofL in 2012 after 35 years of service. He received his doctorate from the University of California, Riverside in 1977 and began his career at UofL immediately thereafter. During his time at UofL, he chaired the Department of Sociology from 1991-92 and again from 1999-2004 and taught urban sociology and sociology of aging and both undergraduate and graduate courses in research methods and statistics. (email)