The Sorokin Lecture has been a longstanding opportunity for a distinguished ASA member to deliver a lecture at a regional sociological society meeting. Since 1967, each year the winner of the ASA Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award has traveled to a regional association and speaks about the book that had been honored. A restricted fund, named for past ASA President Pitirim Sorokin, underwrote the costs for the visiting lecturer.
As part of the planning for ASA’s centennial, ASA Council discussed many ways in which the Association could extend sociological knowledge to new audiences, including students, faculty in other fields, and interested community members. After some discussion of various options, the Council decided to modify the existing Sorokin Lectureship to achieve greater outreach potential in three ways.
First, the new Sorokin Lectureship will include more possible lecturers. Any of the winners of major ASA awards in the past two years may be available to make visits. The range of topics is therefore now substantially expanded. Second, the list of organizations eligible to host a lecture has expanded from regional sociological societies to include any sociological society, and even college campuses. A state sociological society, for example, may be looking for a keynote speaker. A specialty organization may link with one of the ASA award winners according to their specialty or research interests. A campus in a metropolitan area might invite colleagues from their campus and other nearby colleges to hear one of the award-winning sociologists. Third, ASA is now able to fund up to four lectures per year instead of a single lectureship as in past years.
These changes should provide a vibrant road show in which to share the sociological message.
Applications Process
Any of the winners of major ASA awards in the past two calendar years may be available to deliver a lecture at a state, regional, or aligned sociological association meeting, or on a campus. ASA would cover the costs of travel and up to two days of hotel costs. The host would cover registration (if applicable) and meals. Contingent upon available funding, the ASA can support up to four such lecture trips each calendar year.
To apply, send a letter of inquiry with specific information about the event and the audience as well as the lecturer preferred. Executive officers or presidents of associations, or faculty (with chair’s support) in departments may apply to host a lecturer. Submit these materials and any questions to:
Michael R. Murphy
Director, Governance and Sections
American Sociological Association
1430 K Street, NW, Suite 600
Washington, DC 20005
202-383-9005 x327
Murphy@asanet.org
Please plan early. Preference will be given to groups who have not previously hosted a lecturer.
Scholars Available for 2006 Sorokin Lectures
Career of Distinguished Scholarship Award
2006 Recipient: Herbert Gans, Columbia University
He has made seminal contributions - and written classic works - in a remarkable number of different fields: urban sociology, mass media, culture, inequality and poverty, democracy, immigration and race/ethnicity.
2007 Recipients: Joseph Berger, Stanford University
Joseph Berger has dedicated his career to the systematic study of group processes and the ways in which social interactions maintain and legitimate larger systems of inequality.
Distinguished Scholarly Book Award
2006 Recipient: Edward Telles, University of California - Los Angeles, for Race in Another America: the Significance of Color in Brazil (Princeton University Press, 2004)
Breaking a number of social myths about race in Brazil, Telles provides a detailed analysis of how ideas about race emerged in Brazil and resulting in racial classification systems.
2007 Recipient: Patricia Hill Collins, University of Maryland - College Park, for Black Sexual Politics: African Americans, Gender and the New Racism (Routledge, 2005)
Patricia Hill Collins' Black Sexual Politics shows how neither race-blind analyses of gender nor gender-blind analyses of race are sufficient to make sense of the neww racism of the era following the civil rights movement.
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Jerome Karabel, University of California - Berkeley, for The Chosen: the Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton (Houghton Mifflin, 2005)
Through this story, Karabel shows how an elite defended itself, reformed itself, and eventually reconstituted itself in a new form with new claims of legitmacy.
Jessie Bernard Award
2006 Recipient: Margaret Andersen, University of Delaware
Andersen is one of the early gender scholars to recognize that gender is not a stand-alone conept, but rather one that intersects with race, class, sexuality, and ethnicity.
2007 Recipient: Patricia Yancey Martin, Florida State University
Patricia Yancey Martin is the sort of eminent gender scholar whose entire career has demonstrated the depth of her commitment to feminist ideals.
Cox-Johnson-Frazier Award
2006 Recipient: Rutledge M. Dennis, George Mason University
Professor Dennis' contribution in teaching, scholarship and service exemplify the very best of the Cox-Johnson-Frazier tradition.
2007 Recipient: Jorge Bustamante, University of Notre Dame
Dr. Bustamante's lifetime contributions in research, teaching and service in the field of international migration and human rights exemplify the very best of the Cox-Johnson-Frazier tradition.
Award for Public Understanding of Sociology
2006 Recipient: Diane Vaughan, Columbia University
Vaughan has steered public debates toward the recognition that accidents in the space program are, in fact, social problems, and helped an important government agency revamp its understanding of and procedures for dealing with risk.
2007 Recipient: Andrew Beveridge, Queens College - City University of New York
The pages of the New York Times and enriched by Andrew Beveridge's analysis of U.S. Census data, making it possible for the public to understand demographic trends, patterns of inequality and forces of social change in New York and the Nation.
Distinguished Career Award for the Practice of Sociology
2006 Recipient: Arthur Shostak, Drexel University
As an applied sociologist, Shostak has been a futurist consultant for various levels of government, loabor unions, and companies.
2007 Recipient: Robert Dentler, University of Massachusetts - Boston
Dentler's most important contributions have been as a sociologist engaged in the struggle for racial justice, particularly in relation to the desegregation of public schools, in which he has played a major role since the 1960s.
Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award
2006 Recipient: Kathleen McKinney, Illinois State University
She has made a significant impact on improving the teaching of sociology on all levels of education while in the classroom and through the ASA workshops she offers.
2007 Recipient: Edward Kain, Southwestern University
Kain has made contributions in a wide range of venues, in preparation of teaching and curriculum-related materials and publications.
