Calls for Papers: Publications
Work and Occupations seeks papers for its upcoming special issue on the theme “Working for Social Change.” The issue will feature theoretically innovative and empirically rigorous research on occupational activism in and around workplaces and occupational communities. Editors welcome the use of theoretical frameworks from a variety of sociological subfields, as well as quantitative, qualitative, or mixed-methods approaches. Submit a proposal article title and extended abstract (up to 500 words by September 1, 2024. For more information, including a list of possible topics, visit the website.
The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences seeks submissions for its upcoming issue “Moving Beyond Deaths of Despair: Understanding Rising Mortality and Morbidity among Americans without College Degrees.” Editors invite abstracts that address the questions of what explains the growing educational divide in physical and mental health and what this widening means for the lives of Americans without college degrees. Papers on a diverse range of topics are welcome. Prospective contributors should submit a CV and an abstract of their study, along with up to two pages of supporting material, by September 4, 2024. Read the full call for papers here.
Projections, the annual peer-reviewed journal produced by the MIT Department of Urban Studies and Planning, invites submissions for its upcoming issue on the theme “Planning for Polycrisis.” Editors seek scholarship that grapples with what planning practice and study can learn from grounded practices—community-based activism, mutual aid, everyday care, and insurgent practices—to diagnose and negotiate interconnected crises. Editors welcome diverse scholarly responses, analytic, pragmatic, and normative, on what can be done to address conditions of polycrisis and how planning and planners are situated within conditions of compounded vulnerability. Abstracts are due by September 6, 2024. Read the full call for papers here.
Environmental Sociology seeks abstracts for its upcoming special issue on the theme “Global Research of Climate Change.” This issue will bring together scholars studying the human dimensions of climate change from a global perspective to articulate the cross-national dimension of the climate crisis. Contributions will push the intellectual agenda in environmental sociology research by synthesizing theoretical arguments and advancing methodological innovations. Through complementing and expanding existing literature, the special issue can help address emerging challenges and guide pathways to policy influence. Abstracts are due October 1, 2024. For more information on submission guidelines and a list of possible topics, click here.
Cultural Sociology, a journal of the British Sociological Association, seeks abstracts for its upcoming special issue on the theme “Cultural Sociology of War.” The issue will apply and develop cultural sociology as an intellectual tool to advance our theoretical understanding of these processes. Editors seek articles that explore how wars, across geographical locations and temporalities, are narrated, coded or imagined, and how such cultural imaginations shape the emotions, reactions, and moral visions about wars and legacies of wars. The deadline for abstracts is October 17, 2024. For submission guidelines and a list of possible topics, click here.
Organization Studies seeks papers for a special issue on the theme “Platform Organizations and Societal Change.” This special issue aims to generate robust organization theory that advances our understanding of the various ways through which platform organizations affect societal change and are shaped by other organizations, organizing, the organized, the disorganized, and the unsettled in and between economy, politics, and society. Editors invite papers that draw upon and combine insights from a variety of research areas and embrace a wide range of qualitative and quantitative methodologies and methods, including mixed methods and novel approaches. The submission deadline is February 28, 2025. Read the complete call for papers here.
Calls for Papers: Conferences
The Im/migrant Well-Scholar Collaborative invites scholars from across disciplines from the social sciences and humanities to submit their research to the conference Im/migrant Well-Being: A Nexus for Research & Policy 2025 Conference. We understand well-being as encompassing social, emotional, relational, economic, psychological, and physical aspects, and as a critical concept for both creating public policies and analyzing their impact. Submissions are due September 15, 2024. Find out more and submit your paper here.
The Sixteenth International Conference on Sport & Society will be held on the theme “Global Sports Local Cultures,” July 2-4, 2025, in Melbourne, Australia and online. Brought together around a common interest in cultural, political, and economic relationships of sport to society, the conference seeks papers on the following themes: sporting cultures and identities, sport and health, sports education, and sports management and commercialization. The submission deadline is April 2, 2025. For more information, visit the website.
The Twentieth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences will be held on the theme “Minds and Machines: Artificial Intelligence, Algorithms, Ethics, and Order in Global Society” on July 2-4, 2025, in Spain and online. Brought together by a common interest in disciplinary and interdisciplinary approaches within and across the various social sciences, as well as between the social, natural, and applied sciences, the network seeks papers on the following themes: social and community studies, civic and political studies, cultural studies, global studies, environmental studies, organizational studies, educational studies, and communication studies. The submission deadline is April 2, 2025. For more information, visit the website.
The Thirty-Second International Conference on Learning will be held on the theme “Human Learning and Machine Learning—Challenges and Opportunities for Artificial Intelligence in Education,” July 8-10, 2025, in Spain and online. Brought together around a common concern for learning at all sites and levels, the network seeks papers on the following themes: pedagogy and curriculum; assessment and evaluation; educational organization and leadership; early childhood learning; learning in higher education; adult, community, and professional learning; learner diversity and identities; technologies in learning; literacies learning; and science, mathematics, and technology learning. The submission deadline is April 8, 2025. For more information, visit the website.
Fellowship
The University of Basel has launched the Forum Basiliense, a platform for interdisciplinary dialogue. The forum aims to foster exchange and collaboration between scholars of the humanities and social sciences, life sciences and the natural sciences. The question of “Living in the Anthropocene” is the forthcoming annual theme of research at the forum and the intellectual focus for the second group of international fellows. The forum invites fellows for three- to six-month visits during 2025, preferably during the spring or the autumn term. Fellows are expected to participate in events and scientific exchange during their stay. Applications with a focus on the theme in any of the disciplines represented at the University of Basel are encouraged. Applications are due July 31, 2024. For more information, visit the website.
Event
Vibrant Emotional Health will be holding its fourth annual conference, “We the Resilient,” on October 1-3, 2024, in Nashville, TN. Leaders in the disaster behavioral health space are not only advocates for a more resilient community but are the ones creating it. The goal of the conference is to design human-first systems and structures that build up communal resilience in a sustainable and equitable way in each of our disciplines. For more information, visit the website.
Accomplishments
Asad L. Asad, Stanford University, received an honorable mention for the Law and Society Association Herbert Jacob Book Prize.
Irene Bloemraad, joined the sociology and political science departments of the University of British Columbia-Vancouver on July 1 as the inaugural President’s Excellence Chair in Global Migration. She will also serve as the codirector of the university’s Centre for Migration Studies.
Lynette J. Chua, National University of Singapore, received the 2024 Law and Society Association International Prize.
Kelley Fong, University of California-Irvine, received the 2024 Herbert Jacob Book Prize from the Law and Society Association for her book Investigating Families: Motherhood in the Shadow of Child Protective Services (Princeton University Press 2023).
Kaaryn S. Gustafson, University of California-Irvine, received the 2024 Ronald Pipkin Service Award from the Law and Society Association.
Victoria I. Piehowski, SUNY-Buffalo, received an honorable mention for the Law and Society 2024 Dissertation Award for “The Political Uses of Trauma: Establishing and Expanding Veterans Treatment Courts in Minnesota,” completed at the University of Minnesota.
Kevin T. Smiley, Louisiana State University, was awarded a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program (CAREER) grant from the Humans, Disasters, and Built Environment (HDBE) program for his project entitled “Investigating Iterative Interrelations in Socio-Environmental Processes to Improve Climate Change Attribution Research.”
Elena van Stee, University of Pennsylvania, has been awarded a Russell Sage Foundation Dissertation Research Grant to support her project, “Still Launching? Moral Understandings of Financial (In)Dependence in Young Adulthood.”
Ari Ezra Waldman, University of California-Irvine, received the 2024 Law and Society Association Article Prize for his piece “Gender Data in the Automated Administrative State,” published in the Columbia Law Review.
In the News
Robin Bartram, University of Chicago, was quoted in the July 8, 2024, article “Problem Properties: Columbus’ Top Code-Violating Landlords” in the Columbus Dispatch.
Irene Bloemraad, University of British Columbia-Vancouver, was quoted for the June 27, 2024, piece “What Is Going on with Immigration in Canada? Here’s What the Data Shows” for CTV News.
Andrea S. Boyles, Tulane University, was quoted in the June 23, 2024, article “A New Study Reveals a Massive Racial Wealth Gap in the New Orleans Area” in the Times-Picayune.
Linda Burton, University of California-Berkeley, reflected on her five years leading the School of Social Welfare in the May 15, 2024, article “Higher Ground: A Walk in Faith with Dean Linda Burton” in the school’s magazine Social Welfare.
Jessica Calarco, University of Wisconsin-Madison, had her new book, Holding It Together: How Women Became America’s Safety Net (Penguin Random House 2024) profiled in the June 13, 2024, article “American Women Are at a Breaking Point” in the Atlantic. She was also interviewed for the June 4, 2024, article “How U.S. Women Were Forced to Become Their Own Social Safety Net” in Fast Company, and was interviewed in the July 3, 2024, article “Q&A: Jessica Calarco on ‘How Women Became America’s Safety Net’” from the Associated Press.
Amin Ghaziani, University of British Columbia, spoke about his new book Long Live Queer Nightlife (Princeton University Press 2024) on the June 13, 2024, episode of the Marketplace Morning Report for a segment titled “The Disappearance—and Reimagination—of the Gay Bar,” was interviewed for the June 19, 2024, episode of the podcast Getting Curious with Jonathan Van Ness titled “Where Have All the Gay Bars Gone,” and was quoted in the June 27, 2024, article “Pride Is Nearly Over – and So Might Be the Golden Age of London’s Queer Nightlife” in the Guardian.
Katherine A. Giuffre, Colorado College, was quoted in the June 28, 2024, article “How Fast Food Is Getting Faster” in the New York Times.
Philip S. Gorski, Yale University, was quoted in the July 8, 2024, article “Oklahoma’s Superintendent Orders Public Schools to Teach the Bible – Relying on Controversial Views about Religious Freedom” in the Conversation.
Monica Kirkpatrick Johnson, Washington State University, was quoted in the July 7, 2024, article “Why Gen Zers Aren’t Leaving the Nest” in Business Insider.
Eric Klinenberg, New York University, was quoted in the July 5, 2024, article “How to Survive a Heat Wave on a Fixed Income” in Salon.
Judith A. Levine, Temple University, was quoted in in the July 8, 2024, article “Republicans Repeat Misinformation about ‘Crime-Ridden American Cities, but Stats Say Otherwise,” in the Philadelphia Inquirer.
Jane Lilly Lopez, Brigham Young University-Provo, coauthored the June 18, 2024, article “How Biden’s Executive Order to Protect Immigrant Spouses of Citizens from Deportation Will Benefit Their Families and Communities” in the Conversation with Kristina Fullerton Rico, University of Michigan.
Nancy López, University of New Mexico, was quoted in the June 14, 2024, article “Afro-Latinos Fear Being Erased from Next United State Census” in El Pais.
Nancy López, University of New Mexico, and Alan Aja, Brooklyn College-CUNY, contributed to the May 3, 2024, opinion piece, “The Next Census Could Reveal a Very Different America” on CNN.
Ben Manski, George Mason University, was quoted in the July 7, 2024, article “Viewpoints: Protests Matter in Election Years—and This Year’s Had Plenty,” in the Buffalo News.
Reuben A. Buford May, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, was quoted in the June 19, 2024, article “Is It a ‘Dress Code’ Or Is It Discrimination? Restaurants Explain Their Stance,” in HuffPost.
Tamara Mose, Brooklyn College-CUNY, was a guest on the May 20, 2024, episode of the Tamron Hall Show for the segment “Are Sleepovers Still Safe for Kids? For Many Parents It’s Complicated.”
Samuel L. Perry, University of Oklahoma, was quoted in the July 7, 2024, article “Ten Commandments Gone Wild! The Christian Right’s Latest Toxic Distraction” on Salon.
Allison Pugh, University of Virginia, authored the June 23, 2024, article “The Triumph of Counting and Scripting” in Slate.
Rashawn Ray, University of Maryland, was a guest on the June 4, 2024, episode of Laura Coates Live on CNN and was quoted in the June 29, 2024, article “Black Americans Respond to Trump’s Notion of ‘Black Jobs’” in Forbes.
Aaron Reeves and Sam Friedman, London School of Economics, were quoted from their forthcoming book Born to Rule: The Making and Remaking of the British Elite (Harvard University Press 2024) in the July 7, 2024, article “Biden, Putin, Xi, Modi: What Is It That Keeps Old Ideas, as Well as Old People, in Power?” in the Guardian.
Patrick T. Sharkey, Princeton University, was quoted in the July 8, 2024, article “Why the U.S. Had a Violent Crime Spike During Covid—and Other Countries Didn’t” on Vox.
Benjamin Shestakofsky, University of Pennsylvania, had his book Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality (University of California Press 2024) reviewed in the May 16, 2024, article “In the Corporate World, Woke Is the Rage, Bur Greed Is Still King” in the New York Times.
Kevin T. Smiley, Louisiana State University, appeared on The Weather Channel on May 30, 2024, to talk about the national impact of people being displaced during hurricane season.
Jackie Smith, University of Pittsburgh, was quoted in the July 8, 2024, article “Priced Out: New Harvard Report Highlights Growing Affordable Housing Crisis” in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Casey Stockstill, Dartmouth College, was interviewed for the July 2, 2024, article “Early Education Is the Most Segregated Learning Space” in Early Learning Nation.
Megan Thiele Strong, San Jose State University, authored the May 21, 2024, opinion piece “Protect More Than Women’s Bodies on Campus” in Ms. Magazine, the June 10, 2024, opinion piece “Sociology saves us all” in Fulcrum, and the July 7, 2024, opinion piece “Sex Needs to Be Loving, Not Deadly,” in the New York Daily News.
Amanda Udis-Kessler, Colorado College, was profiled in the June 27, 2024, article “Colorado Springs Musician, Composer Offers Free Hymns, Hymn Texts to Churches around the World” in the Colorado Springs Gazette.
Laura Upenieks, Baylor University, was quoted in the July 2, 2024, article “Devout Athletes Find Strength in Their Faith. But Practicing It and Elite Sports Can Pose Hurdles,” from the Associated Press.
Joseph Daniel Wolfe, University of Alabama-Birmingham, was quoted in the June 17, 2024, article “Teen Moms from Wealthier Backgrounds May Face Greater ‘Opportunity Costs’ Than Low-Income Teen Moms, Study Finds” in Mississippi Today.
David Yamane, Wake Forest University, was profiled in the June 23, 2024, article “Locked, Loaded, and… Liberal?” in the Washington Free Beacon.
New Books
Loka L. Ashwood, University of Kentucky; Aimee Imlay, Mississippi State University; Lindsay Kuehn, Farmers’ Legal Action Group; Allen Franco, public defender; and Danielle Diamond, Harvard Law School, Empty Fields, Empty Promises: A State-by-State Guide to Understanding and Transforming the Right (University of North Carolina Press 2024).
David J. Armor, George Mason University (retired); John R. Munich, Stinson LLP; and Aron Malatinszky, Boston University, School Resources, the Achievement Gap, and the Law: Reconsidering School Finance, 8 Policies, and Resources in US Education Policy (Routledge 2024).
Robert Brulle, Brown University; J. Timmons Roberts, Brown University; Miranda Spencer, journalist and editor, Eds., Climate Obstruction Across Europe (Oxford University Press 2024).
Vicky (Vasilikie) Demos, University of Minnesota-Morris (retired); Marcia Texler Segal, Indiana University Southeast (retired), Eds., People, Places and Spaces in Gendered Environments (Emerald 2024).
Brandon A. Jackson, John Jay College-CUNY, Brotherhood University: Black Men’s Friendships and the Transition to Adulthood (Rutgers University Press 2024).
James R. Jones III, Rutgers University-Newark, The Last Plantation: Racism and Resistance in the Halls of Congress (Princeton University Press 2024).
Joanna Kempner, Rutgers University-New Brunswick, Psychedelic Outlaws: The Movement Revolutionizing Modern Medicine (Hachette Books 2024).
Elizabeth Korver-Glenn, Washington University-St. Louis; Sarah Mayorga, Brandeis University, A Good Reputation: How Residents Fight for an American Barrio (University of Chicago Press 2024).
Amanda McMillan Lequieu, Drexel University, Who We Are Is Where We Are: Making Home in the American Rust Belt (Columbia University Press 2024).
James B. Rule, University of California-Berkeley (retired), Taking Privacy Seriously; How to Create the Rights We Need, While We Still Have Something to Protect (University of California Press 2024).
Eviatar Zerubavel, Rutgers University-New Brunswick (retired), Don’t Take It Personally: Personalness and Impersonality in Social Life (Oxford University Press 2024).
Death Notice
Stanley Sue passed away on June 6, 2024. Sue, a clinical psychologist, contributed immensely to the sociology of mental health and education. Some of Sue’s research examined the structural causes of disparate outcomes for some racial and ethnic groups. As a result of his groundbreaking research, he recommended systematic changes in policies and programs to reduce and eliminate these inequities. Sue was also a strong supporter of the ASA Minority Fellowship Program. You can read his full obituary here.
John K. Rhoads
1930-2024
John K. “Jack” Rhoads passed away on April 21, 2024, after more than 30 years as a teacher and scholar of sociological theory at Northern Illinois University. After retiring from teaching in 1998, Rhoads kept in touch with numerous students and colleagues. He will be sorely missed by several generations of colleagues and students.
Rhoads was born in Reading, PA, and received a BA from Albright College in 1952 and an MA from Case Western Reserve University the following year. After serving in the military from 1953-55, Rhoads’s sociological career truly began at University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he studied with the renowned sociological theorists Howard P. Becker and Hans Gerth. He defended his dissertation in 1960 as Becker’s last student.
Rhoads taught from 1961-66 at DePauw University before arriving at Northern Illinois University (NIU) in 1966, where he quickly became the department’s principal theorist. In 1970 he received the NIU Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award. Pedagogically, Rhoads helped create a year-long sequence of theory courses required of all sociology undergraduates, in which the course History of Social Thought (from the Greeks to Marx) was followed by the more standard course, Sociological Theory, which covered thinkers such as Marx, Weber, Mead, and Durkheim in their original writings. Generations of students took his graduate seminar in sociological theory, and Rhoads is remembered by many students for conveying a remarkable passion for the subject. Rhoads had a good rapport with many students and was welcoming and kind. Outside the classroom, he was happy to have spirited discussions about a wide range of issues.
Rhoads authored a number of articles, including one on the debate between Gouldner and Parsons that has been widely cited. He also authored the book Critical Issues in Social Theory (Penn State University Press 1991), an analytical survey of persistent controversies that have shaped the field of sociology. Rhoads impressed many with his clarity of expression on issues such as Weber on the political community. The latter concept was at the center of Rhoads’s unfinished monograph, for which his research ranged through not only Weber’s own writings, but also a wealth of historical sources on social systems, from ancient Rome through early modern monarchies to modern capitalist societies.
After his retirement, whenever he came into the department (arriving by motorcycle), everyone was always delighted to see him. Rhoads was a sparkling conversationalist and intellectual interlocutor, graced with analytical acuity and wit, both of them razor sharp. For decades, he participated in regular lunch or evening conversation groups with faculty across several disciplines, among them history, political science, and philosophy. He did not limit his interactions to other intellectuals but was also a regular at several taverns and restaurants in the DeKalb area, at which he would arrive on his motorcycle and then engage in conversation with working people, sometimes late into the night.
Even at his advanced age, Rhoads seemed immortal. He never lost his smile, and he always brought a smile to others. His passing created a black hole in the hearts of many of us, but his intellectual and personal contributions remain alive in those who knew him.
Rhoads was preceded in death by his wife and companion, Ruth (Harris) Rhoads, on March 4, 2023. They met in Madison in the late 1950s and were married in 1960. They came to DeKalb in 1966, where Ruth worked as dissertation editorial advisor at the NIU Graduate School. They lived a quiet life in their house at the edge of this prairie town.
By Kevin B. Anderson, University of California-Santa Barbara; Richard Quinney, Northern Illinois University (emeritus); Fred Markowitz, Northern Illinois University; and Jim Thomas, Northern Illinois University (emeritus)
