March 2022 Issue
- Call for Book Proposals
- Calls for Papers: Publications
- Calls for Papers: Conferences
- Call for Proposals
- Fellowships
- Prizes for Undergraduates and Graduates
- Call for Nominations
- Scholars Programs
- Events
- Accomplishments
- In the News
- New Books
- Obituaries
Call for Book Proposals
Cambridge Scholars Publishing (CSP) invites proposals for academic books and edited collections in the humanities and social sciences. To learn more about CSP, visit the website, where you can also complete a Book Proposal Form. Authors also can contribute to the Book in Focus series. CSP is continuing to encourage books on issues relating to social justice and hopes to publish the results of a collaborative research project with a UK University on the important issues of diversity, equality, and inclusion. Read more about CSP’s approach to how academic publishing intersects with social justice issues in the No Shelf Required online magazine. Deadline is ongoing.
Calls for Papers: Publications
The Journal of Social Encounters seeks submissions for its special issue, “Extractive Politics, Conflict, and Peacebuilding.” Bringing together scholarship that explores contemporary developments in extractive politics, conflict, and peacebuilding, the journal also welcomes papers that address a number of themes. Abstracts of 300–500 words are due to [email protected] by April 25, 2022. Read the call for papers here.
Population Research and Policy Review (PRPR) welcomes proposals for its next special issue, which will include 6–12 empirical papers and an introductory editorial that provides an overarching synthesis of the individual contributions. Proposals for the special issue should be made by the expected guest editor(s) and submitted to PRPR editors-in-chief. For a copy of the full call for proposals, contact the editors-in-chief of PRPR, Kara Joyner and Corey Sparks. The deadline is May 1, 2022.
Ethnographic Studies seeks contributions to its 2022 edition. A peer-reviewed international journal, Ethnographic Studies publishes work in contemporary ethnomethodology as well as research in other fields. The journal’s policy is to publish empirical studies but also theoretical and philosophical work that relates to current issues and debates in the human sciences broadly conceived. Email a copy of your submission to [email protected]. Learn more about the publication here. The deadline is May 31, 2022.
The Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion seeks submissions for its special issue “W.E.B. Du Bois: Religion and Social Inequality.” The primary objective of this special issue is to promote theoretically driven and methodologically rigorous social scientific scholarship on the intersection of religion and social inequality in the contemporary world that is informed by a Du Boisian scholarly tradition. All manuscripts are subject to the normal anonymous peer-review process. The deadline for submitting papers is June 1, 2022. Find more information on the website. Direct questions about this special issue to “JSSR W.E.B. DU BOIS CO-EDITORS” at [email protected].
The European Journal of Industrial Relations seeks submissions for its special issue “China’s Influence on Industrial Relations in Europe and Beyond.” The journal welcomes submissions that bring theoretical, empirical, and methodological novelties to our current understanding of the Chinese influence on employment relations overseas, with a particular focus on, but not limited to, Europe (including the UK). The deadline for submissions is June 30, 2022. Find more details here.
Calls for Papers: Conferences
Information, Medium, & Society: Twentieth International Conference on Publishing Studies will be held on the theme of “Is Publishing a Critical Infrastructure? Innovation, Creativity, and Resilience in an Age of Artificial Intelligence” and will take place at the University of the Aegean in Rhodes, Greece, June 21–22, 2022. The Publishing Studies Research Network is brought together by a shared interest in investigating publishing practices as distinctive modes of social knowledge production. The network invites proposals on several themes. The proposal deadline is March 21, 2022. For more information, visit the website.
The Seventh International Conference on Tourism & Leisure Studies will be held on the theme of “Responsible Post Pandemic Tourism: Built Environment and Design Excellence” and will take place at Muziris International Research and Convention Center in Kerala, India, June 27–28, 2022. The Tourism & Leisure Studies Research Network is brought together to explore the economic, cultural, and organizational aspects of tourism and leisure. The network invites proposals on several themes. The proposal deadline is March 27, 2022. For more information, visit the website.
The Thirteenth International Conference on Sport & Society will be held on the theme of “Whose Body Is it? Sport and the Problem of Autonomy” and will take place at Aarhus University in Denmark, June 30–July 1, 2022. The Sport & Society Research Network is brought together around a common interest in cultural, political, and economic relationships of sport to society. The network invites proposals on several themes. The proposal deadline is March 30, 2022. For more information, visit the website.
The 2022 National Humanities Conference seeks proposals. The conference will be held November 10–13, 2022, in Los Angeles, in collaboration with California Humanities. Cohosted by the National Humanities Alliance and the Federation of State Humanities Councils, the National Humanities Conference brings together representatives from colleges, universities, state humanities councils, cultural institutions, and other community-based organizations to explore approaches to deepening the public’s engagement with the humanities. To learn more about this year’s theme, “Energy in Motion,” and how to submit a session proposal, explore the full CFP. The deadline for proposal submission is April 1, 2022.
The Twenty-ninth International Conference on Learning will be held on the theme of “Intercultural Learning in Plurilingual Contexts” at the University of Valencia in Spain, July 13–15, 2022. The Learner Research Network is brought together around a common concern for learning in all its sites—formal and informal—and at all levels, from early childhood to schools, colleges, and universities, as well as adult, community, and workplace education. The network invites proposals on several themes. The proposal deadline is April 13, 2022. More information can be found on the website.
The 2022 International Conference on Aging in the Americas will be held on the theme of “Cognitive Aging in Mexico and Latinos Communities in the United States: Deconstructing Resilience” in Chicago on September 14–16, 2022, and is accepting poster abstracts until April 15, 2022. All poster abstracts should include: project title; lead author’s name, email address, and classification (undergraduate student, graduate student, postdoc, or assistant professor); and a brief summary of the research project (300 words or less). For more information, visit the website.
The Society of the Scientific Study of Religion (SSR) and the Religious Research Association are seeking papers for its 2022 Annual Meeting on the theme of “Religion, Racial Unrest, and Pandemics.” The meeting will be held at the Renaissance Baltimore Harborplace Hotel in Baltimore on November 11–13, 2022. Read the call for papers here. The deadline is April 15, 2022. For assistance, contact the SSSR at [email protected].
The Annual Conference on Experimental Sociology (ACES) at Utrecht University will be held on August 31–September 2, 2022, and welcomes submissions of abstracts on survey, laboratory, field, and online experiments conducted to address sociologically relevant questions. In particular, it welcomes submissions on replications and secondary analyses of previous experimental results, early-career scholars’ research designs in the prefield phase of their projects, and methodological advances in experimental sociology. Visit the website for information on how to submit. The abstract submission deadline is April 19, 2022.
The American Public Health Association invites submissions for individual paper presentations, posters, and coordinated panel discussions on topics concerning ethics and public health. You do not need to be a current member of the Ethics Section or a professional in ethics to submit an abstract. Abstracts that are framed to fit with the 2022 theme (“150 Years of Creating the Healthiest Nation: Leading the Path Toward Equity”) are especially encouraged, but all submissions addressing public health ethics are welcome. The Ethics Section encourages submissions from academic researchers, public health practitioners, and current students. The submission deadline is April 30, 2022. For more information, visit the website.
The Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) Data User Training Virtual Workshop—hosted by ICPSR, University of Michigan—will be held on June 13–17, 2022. This virtual five-day workshop will orient participants to the content and structure of PSID, its special topics modules, and the PSID Child Development Supplement and PSID Transition into Adulthood Supplement. The workshop pairs instructional sessions led by experienced PSID researchers and staff with guided lab sessions in which users construct their own analytic data files. Scholars interested in participating are encouraged to send a brief abstract describing their research to either James Hawdon or Matthew Costello by April 30, 2022. Selected papers presented at the conference will be invited to contribute to an anthology on hate crimes, Research Handbook on Hate Crime and Society. More information and to apply, visit the website.
Call for Proposals
The Social Science Research Council, with support from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, invites letters of interest from research teams for yearlong partnerships to create public-facing web platforms to foster innovative, interdisciplinary public scholarship on a research question, topic, or theme of their choice. To develop their partner sites, researchers will receive access to Research AMP, a customizable research area mapping platform tool for academics who want to bridge disciplines and share their research with broader audiences. Letters of interest are due by March 31, 2022. Find out more on the website.
Fellowships
The Social Science Research Institute at the Pennsylvania State University anticipates an opening for a postdoctoral fellow in its new Migration and Diversity Initiative (MDI), starting on or about August 15, 2022. The postdoctoral fellow will devote time supporting the MDI, research collaborations with faculty mentors, and independent research. The appointment is for one year, with a possibility for a second year, contingent on funding availability. Screening of applications will begin on April 1, 2022, and will continue until the position is filled. Please apply here. Candidates should direct questions to Jennifer Van Hook, the director of the Immigration and Diversity Initiative.
The Social Science Research Council’s Religion, Spirituality, and Democratic Renewal Fellowship offers research support over a period of up to 12 months to doctoral students who have advanced to candidacy and to postdoctoral researchers within five years of their PhD. It welcomes proposals on all aspects and dimensions of religion and spirituality in relation to democracy from across all fields in the social sciences, humanities, and theology. Applications are due April 14, 2022. More information on the fellowship, eligibility, and application process is available on the program’s website.
Prizes for Undergraduates and Graduates
The Center for Communal Studies at the University of Southern Indiana invites submissions for its prize competition for the best undergraduate and graduate student papers on historic or contemporary communal groups, intentional communities, and utopias. Submissions are due by April 1, 2022, and may come from any academic discipline and should be focused on a topic clearly related to contemporary or historic communal groups or utopias. For more information, visit the website.
Call for Nominations
The Herriot Award Committee invites nominations for the 2022 Roger Herriot Award for Innovation in Federal Statistics. The award is intended to reflect the characteristics that marked Roger Herriot’s career, including: dedication to the issues of measurement; improvements in the efficiency of data collection programs; and improvements and use of statistical data for policy analysis. Individuals or teams at all levels within federal statistical agencies, other government organizations, nonprofit organizations, the private sector, and the academic community may be nominated on the basis of their contributions. Nominations for the 2022 award will be accepted until April 1, 2022. Visit the website for more information.
Scholars Programs
The Council on Contemporary Families (CCF) seeks applicants for the CCF Scholars Early Career Program. The program offers a unique professional development and mentorship opportunity to early career scholars conducting research on American families. It offers selected scholars mentorship from senior scholars who will provide them guidance and support to promote their research to journalists and the media. For information on eligibility requirements and how to apply, visit the website. The deadline is April 8, 2022.
The William T. Grant Foundation’s 2022 Scholars Program Application Guide is now available. The William T. Grant Scholars Program supports the professional development of promising researchers in the social, behavioral, and health sciences. The program funds five-year research and mentoring plans that significantly expand researchers’ expertise in new disciplines, methods, and content areas to address either problems of inequality or improving the use of research evidence. Applicants should have a track record of conducting high-quality research and an interest in pursuing a significant shift in their trajectories as researchers. The online application opens on April 1, 2022, and the deadline to submit an application is July 6, 2022. Find out more about the program and access the application guide here.
Events
The National Research Center on Poverty and Economic Mobility Early-Career Mentoring Institute will be held on June 6–10, 2022, in Davis, CA. This week-long convening will provide valuable mentoring and career development opportunities for poverty and social mobility scholars who are in the early stages of their research careers and who have the potential for leadership in supporting members of populations that are underrepresented among academic researchers. Institute activities will provide participants with opportunities to develop skills that will support policy relevant human services research. The topics covered include developing policy relevant research, paper workshopping, research methodology consulting, and professional mentoring. For more information, visit the website.
The 2022 Knapsack Institute: Transforming Teaching and Learning will take place on June 15–17, 2022, in Colorado Springs, CO. The Knapsack Institute is an intensive, three-day institute organized by the Matrix Center for the Advancement of Social Equity and Inclusion at the University of Colorado-Colorado Springs. It provides much-needed tools, strategies, and support to build inclusive learning environments and deal with resistance in the classroom. It examines and applies the concepts of privilege, oppression, and intersectionality in educational settings. Participants at all levels welcome. To ensure continued safety of our participants, the event will be virtual. Visit the website for more information.
The Aging & Social Change: Twelfth Interdisciplinary Conference will be held on the theme of “Considering Aging Policies: Between the Local and the Global” at Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland, September 22–23, 2022. The Aging & Social Change Research Network is a forum for discussion of challenges and opportunities for a rapidly growing segment of the population worldwide. The process of aging is a concern for individuals, families, communities, and nations. The social context of aging provides a rich background for community dialogue on this, one of the critical questions of our time. More information can be found on the website.
Accomplishments
Rashawn Ray, professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park, and Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at the Brookings Institution, has received the 2022 Mani L. Bhaumik Award for Public Engagement with Science from the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In the News
Chloe E. Bird, RAND Corporation, authored the commentary “Increased Funding for Research in Women’s Health Issues Could Unleash Staggering Returns” in the February 11, 2022, edition of Fortune online.
Caitlyn Collins, Washington University-St. Louis; Jennifer Reich, University of Colorado-Denver; and Jessica Calarco, Indiana University commented on frictions among mothers, historically and throughout the pandemic, in the article “It Feels Like Moms Are at War Over COVID. Who’s to Blame?” in the February 8, 2022, edition of USA Today.
Kerby Goff and John D. McCarthy, Pennsylvania State University, have published two recent articles that debunk misconceptions about violence and Black Lives Matter protests: the October 12, 2021, article “Critics Claim BLM Protests Were More Violent than 1960s Civil Rights Ones. That’s Just not True.” and the February 8, 2022, article “No, Antifia Didn’t ‘Infiltrate’ Black Lives Matter during the 2020 Protests. But Did It Increase Violence?”—both in the Washington Post.
Chris Knoester, Ohio State University, was interviewed about his research on American institutionalized sports nationalism for the November 30, 2021, article “Many Americans Don’t See Sports as Promoting Love of Country” in Ohio State News and for the February 7, 2022, piece “The Intermingling of Sports and Patriotism” on Central Ohio’s NPR station, WOSU Public Media.
Zakiya Luna, Washington University-St. Louis, authored the December 23, 2021, article “‘Other Mother’ of a Generation: On bell hooks and Living Black Feminism” in Ms. and the February 1, 2022, article “How bell hooks Raised a Generation of Radical Feminists” on Refinery29.
Stacy Torres, University of California-San Francisco, wrote the personal essay “How the Pandemic Helped Prepare Me to Cope with My Father’s Final Days,” in the January 29, 2022, issue of the Los Angeles Times.
Frederick Wherry, Princeton University, was quoted in the February 23, 2022, article “Restarting Student Loan Payments Will Harm Black Women the Most” in Teen Vogue.
Viviana A. Zelizer, Princeton University authored the guest essay “When We Were Socially Distant, Money Brought Us Closer” in the February 19, 2022, issue of the New York Times.
New Books
Brent Berry, University of Toronto; and Eric Fong and Kumiko Shibuya, University of Hong Kong, Segregation (Polity 2022).
Will Bridges, University of Rochester; Keisha A. Brown, Tennessee State University; Nitasha Tamar Sharma, Northwestern University; and Marvin D. Sterling, Indiana University-Bloomington, Eds., Who Is the Asianist? The Politics of Representation in Asian Studies (Columbia University Press 2022).
K. C. Carceral and Michael G. Flaherty, Eckerd College, The Cage of Days: Time and Temporal Experience in Prison (Columbia University Press 2021).
Tiago Cardao-Pito, University of Lisbon, Intangible Flow Theory in Economics: Human Participation in Economic and Societal Production (Routledge 2021).
Korie L. Edwards, Ohio State University; Michelle Oyakawa, Muskingum University, Smart Suits, Tattered Boots: Black Ministers Mobilizing the Black Church in the Twenty-First Century (NYU Press 2022).
Melanie Heath, McMaster University; Akosua Darkwah, University of Ghana; Josephine Beoku-Betts, Florida Atlantic University; and Bandana Purkayastha, University of Connecticut, Eds., Global Feminist Autoethnographies During COVID-19: Displacements and Disruptions (Routledge 2022).
Aaron Hoy, Minnesota State University-Mankato, Ed., The Social Science of Same-Sex Marriage: LGBT People and Their Relationships in the Era of Marriage Equality (Routledge 2022).
Decoteau Irby, University of Illinois at Chicago; and Charity Anderson and Charles M. Payne, Rutgers University Newark, Dignity-Affirming Education: Cultivating the Somebodiness of Students and Educators (Teachers College Press 2022).
Nicole Iturriaga, University of California-Irvine, Exhuming Violent Histories: Forensics, Memory, and Rewriting Spain’s Past (Columbia University Press 2022).
Remi Joseph-Salisbury, University of Manchester; and Laura Connelly, University of Salford, Anti-Racist Scholar-Activism (University of Manchester Press 2021).
Rachel Tolbert Kimbro, Rice University, In Too Deep: Class and Mothering in a Flooded Community (University of California Press 2022).
Zakiya Luna, Washington University-St. Louis; and Whitney Pirtle, University of California-Merced, Eds., Black Feminist Sociology: Perspectives and Praxis (Routledge 2022).
Joya Misra, University of Massachusetts; and Kyla Walters, Sonoma State University, Walking Mannequins: How Race and Gender Inequalities Shape Retail Clothing Work (University of California Press 2022).
Salvador Santino F. Regilme Jr, Leiden University, Aid Imperium: United States Foreign Policy and Human Rights in Post-Cold War Southeast Asia (University of Michigan Press 2022).
Nitasha Tamar Sharma, Northwestern University, Hawai‘i Is My Haven: Race and Indigeneity in the Black Pacific (Duke University Press 2021).
A. Javier Treviño, Wheaton College; and Helmut Staubmann, University of Innsbruck, Eds., The Routledge International Handbook of Talcott Parsons Studies (Routledge 2021).
Veena Vasudevan, University of Pittsburgh; Nora Gross, Boston College; Pavithra Nagarajan, CUNY Institute for State and Local Governance; and Katherine Clonan-Roy, Cleveland State University, Eds., Care-Based Methodologies: Reimagining Qualitative Research with Youth in US Schools (Bloomsbury Academic Press 2022).
Obituaries
1940–2021
Family, friends, and colleagues mourn the loss of David Russell Maines, who passed away in his home on November 24, 2021, in Rochester Hills, MI. He was a passionate champion of sociology and symbolic interactionism, a devoted mentor and teacher, a deft and dynamic department chair, a fun-loving free spirit, and a tremendous pool player.
Maines was born on May 6, 1940, in Anderson, IN, and graduated from Marion High School, where he lettered in football and wrestling and was voted “Most Congenial.” He graduated with a BA in sociology and anthropology from Ball State University in 1967. He earned his PhD in sociology in 1973 from the University of Missouri, under his mentor and friend, Robert Habenstein. Maines then embarked on a multiyear postdoctoral fellowship with the National Institute of Mental Health, working with Gregory Stone at the University of Minnesota and William J. Goode at Columbia University. From the mid-1970s to the mid-1980s, Maines held research and teaching positions including at Hunter College, Upsala College, Yale University, Northwestern University, the University of Illinois Chicago, and the University of Iowa. From 1986–1991, Maines worked at Penn State as an associate professor. He then taught at Wayne State University from 1991–1997, before finding his happiest academic home at Oakland University as professor and chair before retiring as professor emeritus in 2008.
Maines published more than 70 refereed articles and dozens of chapters and reviews. He wrote two books, his magnum opus, The Faultline of Consciousness: A View of Interactionism in Sociology (Aldine 2001) and Transforming Catholicism: Liturgical Change in the Vatican II Church (Lexington Books 2007) with Michael McCallion. He edited seven other volumes, including the 1991 festschrift for Anselm Strauss, Social Organization and Social Process (Routledge 1991) and Herbert Blumer’s posthumous Industrialization as an Agent of Social Change (Routledge 1990), with Thomas Morrione.
Maines fought characterizations of symbolic interactionism as astructural and antiquantitative. He was a champion of the notion that interactionism offered vital perspectives on the study of social structure and was compatible with many research methods. He played a vital role in developing narrative sociology, bringing narrative scholarship from communication studies to sociological audiences. He once wrote: “I am a sociologist first and then an interactionist, and I am an interactionist because it is the best-equipped perspective in its broad expression for studying human group life.”
Maines played an essential role in the founding of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, and he edited Symbolic Interaction from 1989–1992. In 1999, he received its highest recognition, the George Herbert Mead Award, and received many other awards throughout his career. In 2002, the Carl Couch Center for Social and Internet Research established the David R. Maines Narrative Research Award for contributions to narrative research.
A lifelong learner himself, Maines loved teaching, from introductory undergraduate classes to mentoring graduate students. Maines formed deep relationships with his graduate students and loved to debate students and colleagues alike over beer and pool games. He was unfailingly able to connect just about any one topic to broader historical contexts with amazing detail.
Maines lived happily and comfortably with his loving wife of 26 years, Dr. Linda Benson. In retirement, Maines sharpened his pool and golf games, bought his dream guitar, continued writing songs and poetry, and published a beautiful book of sketches. Always seeking to improve understanding and believing in Mead’s proposition that people are never quite sure of what they are doing, Maines became curious, and ultimately started practicing Buddhism in his last years as another way to help others and contribute to life.
Maines is survived by his wife, Linda; his children, Monda and David; his grandson, David John; and other cherished family. His brilliance, kindness, generosity, and humor are deeply missed by us all.
Jeffery T. Ulmer, the Pennsylvania State University
Timothy Philip Schwartz-Barcott
1942–2021
A social scientist, author, and U.S. Marine, Timothy Philip Schwartz-Barcott died on October 28, 2021, at the age of 78 near his home in West Greenwich, RI.
Born in McKeesport, PA, Schwartz-Barcott graduated from Latrobe High School and then attended Miami University in Oxford, OH. After completing a bachelor’s degree in philosophy on a Navy ROTC scholarship, he earned his commission as an infantry officer in the U.S. Marine Corps, where he attained the rank of captain.
As combat operations as part of the Vietnam War intensified, Schwartz-Barcott led marines in infantry, civil affairs, and ground reconnaissance units in 1965 and 1966. He was awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star, having miraculously survived an enemy rifle round through his face. These combat experiences, among others, led him to become a forceful advocate for helping the most disadvantaged people at home and abroad.
Schwartz-Barcott met his wife, Donna, while earning his MA and PhD in sociology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He studied under the late evolutionary sociologist and author Gerhard “Gerry” Lenski, who became a cherished, lifelong friend and inspiration. Schwartz-Barcott taught classes and conducted sociological research at the University of North Carolina, the University of Connecticut, the University of Delaware, Brown University, Providence College, and Rhode Island College. He served as executive director of the Center for Energy Policy, Boston, which served to protect New England from overuse of fossil fuels and nuclear power, on the Anti-Arson Task Force in Providence, RI, and as a scientist for other nonprofit organizations concerned about social problems.
Schwartz-Barcott principally strove to make the world a better place through his writing. His research articles have appeared in the Sociological Quarterly, ASA’s Footnotes, Teaching Sociology, the Marine Corps Gazette, and other journals and anthologies. His books included War, Terror and Peace in the Qur’an and in Islam: Insights for Military and Government Leaders (The Army War College Foundation Press 2004); Violence, Terror, Genocide, and War in the Holy Books and in the Decades Ahead (Teneo Press 2018); After the Disaster: Re-creating Community and Well-Being in Buffalo Creek since the Notorious Coal Disaster in 1972 (Cambria Press 2008); Concerning Caputo: Africa and Acts of Faith as Art, Science, and Much More (Mill City Press 2013); and a collection of semiautobiographical short stories called Let There Be Light (Mill City Press 2014).
Richard Kohn, professor emeritus of history and peace, war, and defense at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, collaborated with Schwartz-Barcott for years and wrote: “He was a vital force: so caring, so strong, so moral, so original. Like so many, I cared for him greatly, and I respected his energy and contributions.”
He is survived by his wife of 49 years, Dr. Donna Schwartz-Barcott, a professor emerita of nursing at the University of Rhode Island; his son, Rye Mead Schwartz Barcott, a social entrepreneur and author from Charlotte, NC; his grandchildren, Elle Aubrey, Sage Ashton, and Charlotte Corinne Barcott; his sister, Denise Schwartz, and her husband and son, John and Simeon Paresky; his brothers-in-law, Jim and Richard Barcott, and their wives and children.
Years before his passing, Schwartz-Barcott studied and wrote scholarly articles on last wills and testaments. He asked that these words conclude his obituary: “Thanks to any and all who care. Please keep trying to help the most disadvantaged and helpless infants and children in this world as long as you can. May you be blessed.”
Donna and Rye Schwartz-Barcott, Tim’s wife and son
Henry M. Silvert
1948–2021
Henry M. Silvert, sociologist and author, died on December 10, 2021, in New York City after a long battle with adenoid cystic carcinoma. He was 73.
Born in Philadelphia in 1948, Silvert spent his childhood in North and South America. Silvert was the son of Latin Americanist and political scientist Kalman H. Silvert and sociologist Frieda M. Silvert. In June 1955, a suicidal driver threw Silvert and himself down a mountain in a car in a tiny town 300 miles north of Mexico City. Emerging from a coma after two and a half months in the neurological ward of Central Military Hospital in Mexico City, Silvert had to start over and relearn everything he had known, from how to speak to how to walk.
In his recently published memoir, An Indelible Event and Detour through a Global Childhood (BookBaby 2021), which won the IRWIN Award for Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 (Industry Recognition of Writers in the News from the Book Publicists of Southern California), Silvert looks back on his miraculous recovery. As D. Donovan, a senior reviewer for Midwest Book Review, writes, “A life-threatening car accident may have changed his trajectory, but it didn’t defeat his attitude; Silvert grew into a political activist, employing a social inspection that embraced both his South American experiences and childhood and a growing optimism undaunted by the rigors of adversity.”
Silvert earned his PhD in sociology in 1986 from New York University and studied Latin American area studies at the University of Oxford. He spent his childhood in New Orleans, Guatemala City, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires and lived in Hanover, NH, and Norwich, VT, as a teenager. As a survey associate and statistician, Silvert worked at the Conference Board for 23 years until his retirement and coauthored numerous reports regarding business matters. He also worked on projects addressing, among other topics, childhood hunger, drug use, and the HIV/AIDS epidemic. He gave presentations at conferences on Chile’s return to democratic practices. As a visiting professor at the College of Mexico, he taught comparative politics of Latin America. He also taught sociology courses as an adjunct professor in New York City as well.
He is survived by his wife of 40 years, Morrie Sherry; his brothers and their wives, Benjamin (Andrea Weinstein) and Alexander (Diana Warrington); his niece, Lea; and his nephews, Che and Eli Silvert. He is predeceased by his nephew, Kal Silvert.
A celebration of Silvert’s life will be held in the spring 2022. If you would like to make a charitable donation in memory of Henry M. Silvert, visit the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives website and direct it to ALBA’s Teaching Institutes:
Richard P. Taub
1937–2020
Richard P. Taub, the Paul Klapper Professor in the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago, died on August 19, 2020. He was 83 years old. Taub dedicated his creative, highly productive career to studying and teaching urban economic development and public policy.
Taub’s scholarly legacy is distinguished by his commitment to innovative methodology, policy relevance, and the study of social inequality. His seminal contributions lay in the sociologies of community economic development and urban neighborhood change.
Taub’s work in economic development began with his Harvard dissertation on the challenges facing the Indian Administrative Service during the modernization of the Indian state of Orissa (now Odisha). That work became his first book, Bureaucrats Under Stress: Administrators and Administration in an Indian State (University of California Press 1969). In his book Entrepreneurship in India’s Small-Scale Industries: An Exploration of Social Contexts (Riverdale Co Pub 1989), coauthored by Doris L. Taub, he explored the promise and perils of government-funded small business development, now widely known as microenterprise.
Taub also examined problems created in the United States by discriminatory practices such as redlining and explored community-based attempts to revive local economies. In his book Community Capitalism: Banking Strategies and Economic Development (Harvard Business Review Press 2000), Taub described how thoughtful, socially committed reinvestment could revive economically depressed communities and argued for the necessity of public support—at all levels of government—for community banking.
Taub served as a scholar in residence for the Southern Development Bancorporation, which set up the country’s first rural community development bank in Arkansas in the mid-1980s at the invitation of former Gov. Bill Clinton. Taub spent several years traveling to Arkansas every other week to interview people involved in the project and document the results, culminating in the book Doing Development in Arkansas: Using Credit to Create Opportunity for Entrepreneurs Outside the Mainstream (University of Arkansas Press 2004), in which he highlighted the importance of cultural and political context for community economic development.
In his first major work on urban community change, Paths of Neighborhood Change: Race and Crime in Urban America (University of Chicago Press 1987), Taub explained why communities with different housing, institutional, racial, and crime profiles variously confront the challenge of demographic transformation. This work was methodologically innovative for its time, combining comparative analysis of aggregated census tract data with intensive ethnographic study in specific communities. Among other important arguments, Taub asserted that perceptions of crime, and the presence or lack of anchoring institutions, tangibly affected community stability. In There Goes the Neighborhood: Racial, Ethnic, and Class Tensions in Four Chicago Neighborhoods and their Meaning for America (Knopf 2006), Taub and coauthor William Julius Wilson built on the methodological and analytical strategy of Paths of Neighborhood Change, ultimately arguing that it falls upon neighborhood and political leaders to foster local coalitions so that newly diverse urban neighbors can overcome class, race, and ethnic differences, and work from an appreciation of interdependence.
In the early 1970s, Taub led the new Public Policy Studies program at the University of Chicago and designed its undergraduate major, which he oversaw for three decades. The multidisciplinary major emphasizes applied field methodologies, original research, and intensive practicum classes, mostly on the South Side of Chicago. In addition to being an esteemed faculty member in sociology and public policy, Taub was a member of the Department of Comparative Human Development for more than 15 years, 12 of which he served as department chair (2000–2009; 2012–2015).
Taub was a beloved teacher and mentor, with a distinctive and engaging storytelling and case study-based style. He was also widely recognized for distinguished achievements in research, teaching, and service. In 1976, Taub received the Llewellyn John and Harriet Manchester Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching from the University of Chicago. Taub retired in 2015, and in 2018 the university established the annual Richard P. Taub Thesis Prize for three undergraduates in public policy studies. In 2021, the university named a classroom in Cobb Hall the Richard Taub memorial classroom.
Omar M. McRoberts and Chad Broughton, University of Chicago; and John Eason, University of Wisconsin-Madison