We, the graduate students in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, stand in solidarity with our fellow graduate students who are demanding a fair, equitable level of compensation. Over the last few weeks, we have seen graduate students stretching coast to coast, from Harvard University to UC Santa Cruz, use their collective voices in the name of justice. Despite our work being integral to the very functioning of the university, too many administrations exploit our labor through unjust compensation and poverty wages. The demands our fellow graduate students are making are a necessary first step to ensure that they can continue their duties as employees while simultaneously producing scholarship as students. So, to those engaging in this struggle, we want you to know that we see you, we are inspired by you, and we stand in solidarity with you.
Our “On the Market” series is back, featuring UT-Austin graduate students who are on the job market! This series provides sociology graduate students a space to share their research and exchange advice and insights about the job search process.
This installment features Sam Simon, a doctoral candidate and Urban Ethnography Lab fellow:
Tell us about your research. What are you working on?
In my dissertation, I examine the role that hiring and training practices at police departments play in patterns of racist police violence. I spent last year conducting field work at police hiring units and training academies and interviewing police officers, and am now working on publications and writing the dissertation. In other work, I have studied the sexist and racist organizational structures of Hollywood talent agencies, how civilians are taught to conceptualize and use violence at firearms training schools, why women and racial minorities attrite from STEM fields at disproportionate rates, and how gender shapes access to workplace amenities.
How did you prepare for the process of going on the market (preparing materials, selecting the right job openings, sending out applications, etc.)?
I participated in the job market workshop that Ken organized for students the summer before I started applying to jobs, and sought out feedback on my materials from friends in academia and my advisors. I also gave a practice job talk in several settings to gain experience in front of an audience who have expertise in different methodological and substantive areas.
How do you stay organized when it comes to the job market?
I created an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of job postings that I may be a fit for, listed in order by deadline. In the Excel sheet, I list the institution, department, specialty area they are hiring in (i.e. Criminology, Race/Ethnicity, Gender, etc.), link to the job posting on ASA’s website, submission link, job ID (from ASA’s postings), what materials are required, how letters should be submitted (some require your recommender sends them directly via email), the name of the search committee chair if it was listed, and any other notes. I color-coded the Excel sheet to designate the status of my application: green means I applied, white means I did not apply, yellow means I got an interview, and red means I was informed that I would not be going further in the process. I granted access to this Excel sheet to my letter writers so they could reference it, if needed.
To find out about jobs, I primarily used the ASA job bank, but was also subscribed to the ASA job listserv, and checked emails from ASA sections and other sociological organizations (like SSS and ESS) for job listings.
How are you balancing all of your responsibilities this semester?
Good question! I have designated 2 days roughly every 2 weeks to devote to job applications. On those days, I sit at a coffee shop and crank out the applications that are due that month. The rest of the time, I work on my dissertation, publications, or my research assistant responsibilities.
What is it like being on the market at ASA? What are the keys to success?
I found that being on the market at ASA was not all that different than when you are not on the market. The primary difference was that I was more strategic about which panels I attended based on if I wanted to meet someone presenting, I participated in the ASA job fair, I attended a panel about preparing a job talk, and I prioritized attending receptions and other social events in order to network. Some people go all out at ASA and set up a ton of meetings based on which institutions are hiring. That’s one way to do it, but it was not my approach.
How are you practicing self-care?
During graduate school generally, it has been critical that I spend time pursuing non-academic interests and hobbies. I am the creative director of a dance team in Austin, which has been fantastic both creatively and socially, I lift weights almost every day, and I take the weekends completely off (with a few exceptions) to spend time with friends and relax. Taking weekends off has helped both my mental health and my work, actually – my writing on Monday is significantly better because I take time to think about and experience other things, which I then often bring into my work.
What is your biggest piece(s) of advice for those going on the market next year or in the next few years?
The best advice that I have received is to remember that most of this is beyond your control, so not to spend too much time obsessing or worrying. Spend time preparing your materials in advance so you have plenty of time to make edits, sign up for practice job talks even though it’s nerve-wracking, and seek out support from faculty and fellow students.
Our “On the Market” series is back, featuring UT-Austin graduate students who are on the job market! This series provides sociology graduate students a space to share their research and exchange advice and insights about the job search process.
This installment features Robert W. Ressler, a doctoral candidate and Population Research Center Trainee:
Robert reflects on his previous experiences on the market and discusses the insights that he has gained. When asked about his advice for graduate students going on the academic job market, he writes:
Keep up the hard work, and go easy on yourselves. Honestly, looking back over the last two years I can acknowledge that things have not necessarily gone “according to plan,” but also that plans and priorities change. Just like everything else, the tenure-track system is rigged in favor of those with the most resources (social, cultural, and economic), so I’ve felt like it’s important to remember to pursue opportunities that reflect the reasons that I went to graduate school to begin with: to make a meaningful impact in the communities to which I belong. I moved away from Texas during my last year of graduate school for my husband to pursue a job opportunity, finished my dissertation from afar because it was a requirement for a fellowship from the department, graduated (!!), learned a lot, and began working in new places that I would never have predicted. While I’m still applying for jobs in search of what feels like an ever elusive tenure-track position, I’m also teaching adjunct at Gonzaga University, continuing my research projects in partnership with working groups at UT, contracting for an educational nonprofit in the midst of a program evaluation, and will be picking up teaching an online course at Washington State University next spring, too. All of these opportunities came about not because of my applications, but because of personal and professional connections to communities that had a need that I could fill. During these past two years I’ve also started singing in a community choir, explored a new city, and made some wonderful new friends.
I still feel like a sociologist, and still see myself as an academic researcher and teacher, and plan to continue pursuing this career. In that endeavor I’m maintaining my participation in professional organizations, and I’m still publishing new work (a recent article in Social Science Research on Latina/o enrollment in early childhood education, for example, can be found here). That one took nearly five years from running the first models to publication! Last cycle I had a few on campus interviews that I received very positive feedback over, and my C.V. is constantly improving, so I am trying to remain optimistic for this year. I’ve expanded my application pool this year, and have currently applied to 24 positions and counting in Sociology, Public Policy and Administration, and Human Development and Family Sciences. You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take, right?
Some practical advice that’s gotten me even this far would be to consider all the opportunities that are available to you, try not to hold yourselves to someone else’s metric of success (but do try to get a sole-authored publication ASAP), find and maintain positive working and professional relationships with your advisers (mine have been a life-line; don’t settle for anything less), and remember that each of us is on our own unique journey.
Associate Professor of Sociology Shannon Cavanagh receives 2018-19 President’s Associates Teaching Award from UT Austin President Gregory FenvesProfessor of Sociology Gloria González-López receives 2018-19 President’s Associates Teaching Award from UT Austin President Gregory Fenves
Professors Cavanagh and González-López are two among eight UT Austin faculty who received the award this year. According to a university news release:
The award recognizes the university’s educational innovators who demonstrate exceptional undergraduate teaching in the core curriculum, including signature courses, and engage with curriculum reform and educational innovation.
“These eight faculty members have dedicated themselves to teaching and mentoring,” said Gregory L. Fenves, president of UT Austin. “They build connections with their students and strive to unlock their potential with knowledge and creativity.”
This is the first time that two faculty members from Sociology have received the award during the same year. Moreover, among this year’s awardees, ours was the only department represented by more than one faculty winner.
Several feminist sociologists from UT Austin and members of the department’s gender working group, Fem(me) Sem, enjoyed the weekend at the annual winter meeting of Sociologists for Women in Society (SWS) in Denver, Colorado.
Dr. Brenda Allen leads a plenary workshop for white folks at the conference on identifying and mitigating implicit bias in academia.
(Left to right) UT Austin sociology alums Megan Tobias Neely (now Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford University) and Kirsten Dellinger (now Professor of Sociology at the University of Mississippi).(Left to right) Professors Emily Kazyak, Carla Pfeffer, K. Scherrer, Laura Hirschfield, and Zakiya Luna lead the panel: “Feminist Strategies for Academic Advancement: Dialogues about what We are Glad/Wish We Knew”
For the annual Banquet and Charity Auction, SWS members raised money for Girls Rock Denver, a local volunteer organization whose goal is to “empower girls and gender expansive youth through music education, creation, performance and community, working to put instruments in their hands to unveil what they already possess in their feet, fingertips, vocal cords, hearts and minds.”
(Left to right) PhD candidates Chriss Sneed (UConn, outgoing SWS Student Rep), Katie Rogers (UT Austin), and Emma Mishel (NYU) at the SWS banquet.
UT Austin feminist scholars also participated in individual paper presentations and as roundtable discussants.
A list of UT Austin graduate student participation in SWS is as follows:
Kathleen Broussard: “Embodied Experiences of Surgical and Self–Managed Medication Abortion Care in a Highly Restrictive Context”
Katie K. Rogers: “She Can Hang: College Women, Drugs, and the Patriarchal Bargain”
Jamie O’Quinn is a third-year doctoral student in the Department of Sociology and researches sexualities and social inequality. Her current project investigates U.S. child marriage.
Katie K. Rogers is a sociology PhD candidate at UT Austin studying emerging markets, work inequality, and critical criminology. Her dissertation examines race and gender inequality in the U.S. legal cannabis industry.
Roter faden is the German term for “red thread,” and is used to mean common thread. “Unlike most of German academia, it borrows from sewing,” said University of Wisconsin-Madison Professor of Sociology Myra Marx Ferree, during UT Austin Sociology’s annual Power, History, and Society workshop. “Women’s practical knowledge.” Whether we intend it or not, there is always a red thread in what we study. It’s about what we do with the red thread that matters.
The red thread that runs through Dr. Ferree’s work is now emerging as a network, called the Society of Gender Professionals. This society will set professional standards, share job opportunities, and work to institutionalize the legitimacy of gender experts. She is particularly interested in how expertise gets used, and how certain types of expertise are credited or discredited. For instance, one of her students researches family law reform in Chile, and finds that gender experts are discredited, with economists being perceived as a more legitimate form of authority.
Dr. Ferree also discussed the debates that took place in the 1980s about whether Women’s Studies should be its own discipline or a sub-specialty in another discipline. “Both ways actually succeeded beyond the expectations of anyone on either side of that debate,” Dr. Ferree told us, which is refreshing to hear in a moment when it seems like the only constant is the reproduction of inequality, and even progressive social movements often re-package existing power relationships.
In the first few minutes of Dr. Ferree’s arrival, as we set up food, she engaged every single graduate student, as attentively as if we were her advisees, commenting on the relevance of our research topics, suggesting literature, and offering introductions. She leaned back in her chair, so much at ease. Here is some of the advice she had for graduate students:
Keep track of your ideas. C. Wright Mills kept all his ideas on notecards, said Dr. Ferree, and Charles Tilly kept a filing cabinet full of all the topics he would write about if he lived to be 150. She advised us to do the same. “You can’t pursue every idea, so you have to cut them off, but don’t throw them away!”
Leave room for serendipity. “I don’t pick projects. Projects pick me,” said Dr. Ferree. “When we do our dissertations, we often think that we choose them, but when we dig a little bit deeper, we see that it has to do with where we are located in time and space.”
Avoid identifying with one particular method. More than using quantitative or qualitative methods, Dr. Ferree observed, scholars seem to have “quantitative or qualitative identities.” She believes this quantitative/qualitative binary is a barrier to being relevant. Prioritize staying relevant, she said, and learning new methods. Methods are not something you learn once and set aside. You will be learning methods for the rest of your life.
Remember that methods and theories can be subject to trends. Dr. Ferree explained that sociological methods and theoretical approaches can fall in and out of fashion. For instance, while she was writing her dissertation, multi-dimensional scaling was all the rage, but the way she learned it became obsolete shortly after she spent a year grappling with it. If you are interested in getting a job, consider learning or using trendy methods, but do not forget that they may be subject to change. You have to see what works for you.
Marta Ascherio is a second-year doctoral student in the Department of Sociology and a graduate fellow of the Urban Ethnography Lab. Her research interests include immigration, crime, and social control.
This year’s meeting addressed pedagogy and academic freedom in the age of hate speech and “fake news,” and tackled ongoing issues of race and racism in the academy, the discipline of sociology, and SWS as an organization. SWS President Adia Harvey Wingfield of Washington University in St. Louis convened plenary sessions on topics such as gender and precarious labor, feminism in the academy, and race, gender, and feminist activism.
(Left to right) UT-Austin PhD Kirsten Dellinger (now Professor of Sociology at the University of Mississippi) with current graduate students Jess Goldstein-Kral and Caitlin Carroll
Plenary sessions and workshops spotlighted the voices of faculty and activists of color who, in addition to sharing critiques of existing systems, offered strategies for the path forward. They urged feminists to make careful decisions about how to reform and transform their departments without experiencing burnout. They reminded young scholars that joy exists in research and teaching, even within institutions that can feel impossible to change. They also pushed white feminists in the audience to reflect on their own politics of solidarity, and consider how they might show up more effectively to build coalitions with feminists of color in their institutions, organizations, and networks. Ultimately, they challenged all feminist scholars to, as stated by sociologist Tressie McMillan Cottom of Virgina Commonwealth University, “figure out the difference between performance politics and solidarity.”
Sociologist Kimberly K. Hoang asks a question during a plenary session on feminism in the academy
A contingent of feminist sociologists from UT Austin represented the department, with presentations that centered gender in varying ways. One highlight was a session that grew from Fem(me) Sem‘s Spring 2017 conference, “The Gender of Ethnography and the Ethnography of Gender,” which was organized by a group of sociology graduate students who were interested in using feminist methods in their research. The session, called “Feminist Ethnographies: Dilemmas from the Field,” featured Professor Christine Williams as a discussant, and UT Austin graduate students Shannon Malone, Vrinda Marwah,Ruijie Peng,Beth Prosnitz, and Katie K. Rogers as panelists. They grappled with a number of questions related to feminist methods, including what exactly makes a research design “feminist,” how to manage demands for “proof” in response to situated knowledge, what it means to “gain access,” and how to reckon with accusations of “bias,” particularly with respect to projects that center a researcher’s own community (“me-search”) or emerge from explicitly feminist commitments.
(Left to right) “Feminist Ethnographies” graduate student panelists Vrinda Marwah, Shannon Malone, Katie K. Rogers, Ruijie Peng, and Beth Proznitz(Left to right) Professor Christine Williams and panelists
UT Austin also exhibited a presence among the individual paper presentations, with graduate scholars sharing feminist research on topics that ranged from intimate relationships to the gendered state to issues of gender, race, and labor.
A list of individual papers by UT Austin graduate students is as follows:
Caitlin Carroll “Antiviolence Organizations in Sweden and the Reproduction of Gender Regimes”
Jess Goldstein-Kral “The Relationship Dynamics of Polyamorous Triads: Resisting and Reproducing Inequality”
Jamie O’Quinn “Emerging Sexualities: Girls’ Sexual Agency and the State”
Katie K. Rogers “Gender, Race, and Class in the U.S. Legal Cannabis Industry”
Kara Takasaki “Racialized Masculinities: How Work Shapes the Lives of Asian American Men”
All told, the feminist scholarship and engagement of graduate students, alumni, and faculty affiliated with UT Austin Sociology helped make this year’s SWS conference an event to remember.
Jamie O’Quinn is a second-year doctoral student in the Department of Sociology. Her research interests center around sexuality, gender, race and ethnicity, and social inequality. She is currently researching state efforts to regulate young people’s sexualities.
Katie K. Rogers is a third-year doctoral student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. Her current research examines how women who work in the U.S. legal cannabis industry reconfigure the meanings of “dealers” and “users” during legalization.
Robert L. Reece, Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, has published a reflective piece about the tensions for black academics in a predominately white discipline.
He writes:
There is a homelessness among black academics — an ever-present tension between who we used to be and who we have become — and a reckoning with the reality that neither our old spaces nor our new ones can truly offer us the sense of belonging that we desire. Perhaps it’s double consciousness, to use W. E. B. Du Bois’s classic description of being black in America: “Two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body … this longing to … merge his double self into a better and truer self. In this merging he wishes neither of the older selves to be lost …”
But perhaps it is something else. Maybe Du Bois is too generous. E. Franklin Frazier is more critical in “The Failure of the Negro Intellectual.” He says, “The new Negro middle class is the stratum of the Negro population that is becoming integrated most rapidly because of its education and its ability to maintain certain standards of living. In its hope to achieve acceptance in American life, it would slough off everything that is reminiscent of its Negro origin and its Negro folk background. At the same time integration is resulting in inner conflicts and frustrations because Negroes are still outsiders in American life.”
