<p> </p><p>John Major Eason is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago.&nbsp;Before entering graduate school, he was a church-based community organizer focusing on housing and&nbsp;criminal justice issues. He also served as a political organizer for then Illinois State Senator Barack Obama.&nbsp;His research interest challenges existing models and develops new theories of community, health, race,&nbsp;punishment, and rural/urban processes as these relationships are explored through his book,&nbsp;Big House on the Prairie: Rise of the Rural Ghetto and&nbsp;Prison Proliferation, at the University of Chicago Press.</p>