All posts by jeo848

Academia, Teaching, University of Texas at Austin Sociology, Work, Occupations and Organizations

On the Market: Robert Ressler

December 2, 2019 jeo848 Leave a comment

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.

Public Sociology, University of Texas at Austin Sociology, Work, Occupations and Organizations

Katherine Hill’s research featured in Work in Progress

September 26, 2019 jeo848 Leave a comment

UT Austin sociology doctoral candidate Katherine Hill has written about her dissertation research findings for Work in Progress on the experiences of people with disabilities who work in the gig economy.

She writes:

During the recent government shutdown, approximately 800,000 workers went without pay. Some government workers turned to gig work to make ends meet: Twitter is filled with stories of workers who began driving for Uber or Lyft during the shutdown as a stopgap measure.

Government workers are not alone in turning to gig work to make ends meet. The government shutdown is one example of systemic failures that leave many Americans without a safety net. In an ongoing study, I find that people with a disability also turn to gig work to get by. People with disabilities do gig work because they need a flexible job that allows them to stop working when they can no longer work that day, and to take breaks as needed. […]

Many gig workers experience income volatility, not knowing how much they will earn in a given week and unable to meet their expenses as a result. Additionally, gig workers are not given benefits like paid sick leave, and they are only paid for the time spent completing a task. For example: rideshare drivers are not paid to drive to the passenger when picking them up or to wait for the passenger if they are running late. […]

Despite financial hardships and health issues, many of the people I interviewed said that they will continue to do gig work, for one main reason: for most, there is no other option. Even Jonathan, recovering from multiple heart surgeries, said, “I figured if I can sit in front of the TV, then I can sit in the car and drive. It hurts my chest a lot to drive. But I still do it because there’s nothing else.”

To read the full piece, see Work in Progress.

Katherine Hill is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin, where she is also a Population Research Center trainee and Urban Ethnography Lab Fellow. Her research examines issues of inequality at the intersection of work and organizations, race and identity, and health and healthcare. Katherine’s dissertation uses mixed methods to examine the material and cultural characteristics of the gig economy that contribute to inequality.

Ethnography, Latin American Studies, Political Sociology, Power, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

Alex Diamond writes about Colombia’s peace process in NACLA

September 17, 2019 jeo848 Leave a comment

UT Austin sociology PhD student, Alex Diamond, recently published a piece for North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) (available in both English and Spanish) on the impact of mining and energy megaprojects on Colombia’s peace process.

He writes:

El Orejón, an isolated rural community in the northern Colombian department of Antioquia, is slowly emptying out. A few years ago, 88 people lived on family farms on the valley walls above the Cauca river. Only 48 remain. The neatly cultivated plots of corn, beans, coffee, sugar cane, and yuca of the families still there stand out from the abandoned lands that the jungle is gradually reclaiming. But in contrast to the classic model of rural communities abandoned by the state, the Colombian government has invested significantly in El Orejón, a crucial area for Colombia’s peace process.

El Orejón was the site for the 2015 demining program that marked the first collaboration between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), before being chosen during negotiations of the peace accord as one of 11 hamlets in the municipality of Briceño to launch the pilot coca substitution program in 2017. Little more than two years ago, coca plants covered the hillsides above the river. Now the plants are gone, pulled out voluntarily by local campesinos seeking a transition to legal agriculture.

As El Orejón declines, a settlement across the river, complete with tennis courts and swimming pools, has emerged in the last ten years. This is the camp for workers who are constructing Hidroituango, the largest hydroelectric dam project in the history of Colombia, which lies directly below El Orejón. Public Enterprises of Medellín (EPM), the public-private partnership that is building Hidroituango, has recently come under fire for illegal and irresponsible construction practices with disastrous consequences. In May 2018, a tunnel built to divert river waters during the construction blocked up for weeks and then subsequently burst, leading to massive flooding that displaced 25,000 people in downstream communities.

But the displacement in El Orejón and other communities near the project has nothing to do with flooding or engineering mistakes. Instead, these communities speak to a deeper and less discussed aspect of the Hidroituango project: the way it has disrupted local livelihoods, primarily by limiting their access to the river. This exclusion goes hand in hand with coca substitution and the peace process. Together, they comprise a broader process of pacification in the region that at first deployed violence, and now peace, to serve elite interests at the expense of campesino ways of life. […]

To read the full op-ed, see NACLA.

Alex Diamond is a Sociology PhD student at the University of Texas at Austin. His research seeks to understand the local experience of the post-peace agreement transition in rural areas of Colombia with a long history of insurgent control. Based on interviews and in-depth ethnographic participant observation in the northern Antioquian village of Briceño, his work centers on three major themes: the implementation of the peace accords, particularly the parts that are related to coca substitution and rural reform; the intersection between the peace process, rural dispossession, and mining and energy megaprojects; and the emergence (or lack thereof) of campesino resistance and organizing.

Ethnography, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

UEL Speaker Series “Transnational Ethnography: Interconnected Lives and Social Processes”

September 6, 2019 jeo848 Leave a comment

By Ruijie Peng

Four distinguished scholars from outside of the University of Texas are visiting the Department of Sociology in the Fall and Spring semesters of 2019/2010 to participate in the graduate student-organized speaker series “Transnational Ethnography: Interconnected Lives and Social Processes.” This series features scholarly research that uses qualitative, especially ethnographic approaches, to study transnational processes and social lives. Their projects span across a wide range of contexts, such as Latin America, North America, East and South Asia. They explore how histories, politics, and human experiences in different national and social contexts are interconnected in the age of globalization and large-scale human movements. These projects not only expand the scope of phenomena more commonly studied in single-country contexts, but their unique methods also bring innovative transnational perspective to social science in general.

___________________________________________________________________

In the Fall 2019 semester, two speakers are visiting to give the following talks and workshops:

Rebecca Tarlau, September 26, 2019

Pennsylvania State University

Talk: “Occupying Schools, Occupying Land: How the Landless Workers Movement Transformed Brazilian Education”

September 26, 2019, 12:00 pm

RLP 1.302D

Rebecca Tarlau is an Assistant Professor of Education and Labor and Employment Relations at the Pennsylvania State University. Her work examines how class, race, and gender hierarchies are reproduced through schools, as well as how social movements use education to contest these inequalities. Rebecca’s forthcoming book, Occupying Schools, Occupying Land: How the Landless Workers Movement Transformed Brazilian Education (Oxford University Press), explores the Brazilian Landless Workers’ Movement (MST) and the attempt to transform public education across the country. This work analyzes the micro-politics of grassroots educational reform, that is, the strategies activists use to convince state actors to adopt their initiatives and the political and economic conditions that affect state-society interactions. Her current research project compares teachers’ movements in Brazil, Mexico, and the United States, examining the conditions and strategies that enable teachers and their unions to transcend narrow economic interests and participate in broader struggles for social justice.

Bin Xu, October 8, 2019

Emory University

Talk: “Chairman Mao’s Children and China’s Difficult Past: Generation and Memory.”

October 8, 2019, 12:00 pm

RLP 1.302E

Workshop: “Reflexivity and Reflections: Two International Ethnographies”

October 8, 2019, 3:00 pm

The Ethnography Lab, RLP 3.214F

RSVP through email (TBD)

Bin Xu is an Associate Professor of Sociology and China Studies at Emory University. His research focuses on collective memory of revolutionary China, cultural sociology of civic life, disaster research, and social movements. His award-winning book, Compassionate Politics: The Sichuan Earthquake and Civic Engagement in China, examines the unprecedented wave of self-organized civic engagement involving hundreds of thousands of Chinese citizens in the aftermath of the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake. Currently, he is working on a book project, Chairman Mao’s Children and China’s Difficult Past: Generation and Memory. The book examines the memory of China’s “zhiqing (知青)” (short for zhishi qingnian, the “educated youth”) generation—the 17 million urban, secondary school graduates were transferred to settle in villages, semi-military corps, and state farms in the 1960s and 1970s.

___________________________________________________________________

In the Spring 2020 semester, two speakers are visiting to give the following talks and workshops:

Abigail Andrews, February 13, 2020

University of California-San Diego

Talk and workshop titles TBA

Abigail Andrews is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies at the University of California-San Diego, and the co-director of Mexican Migration Field Research and Training Program in UCSD. Her research interests are in gender, migration, state power, and grassroots agency. She particularly focuses on the struggles of marginalized groups in Mexico and the United States, including indigenous peasants, deportees, and undocumented immigrants. Her well-acclaimed book, Undocumented Politics: Place, Gender, and the Pathways of Mexican Migrants (University of California Press 2018), examines the communities’ struggles for rights and resources across the U.S.-Mexico divide.

Hae Yeon Choo, April 13, 2020

University of Toronto

Talk and workshop titles TBA

Hae Yeon Choo is an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of Toronto. Her research centers on gender, citizenship, transnational migration, and urban sociology to examine global social inequality. In her empirical and theoretical work, she employs an intersectional approach to social inequalities, integrating gender, race, and class in her analyses. Her latest book, Decentering Citizenship: Gender, Labor, and Migrant Rights in South Korea, is a multi-sited and comparative ethnographic research that offers an account of how inequalities of gender, race, and class affect migrants’ practice of rights through studying three groups of Filipina women in South Korea. Her previous works include “The Cost of Rights: Migrant Women, Feminist Advocacy, and Gendered Morality in South Korea” (Gender & Society 2013), and “The Transnational Journey of Intersectionality” (Gender & Society 2012).

___________________________________________________________________

In addition to a public lecture, each speaker will host a workshop session with graduate students on conducting transnational ethnographic research to study globalization, migration, political mobilization, and racialization. These workshops will cover processes such as conceptualizing research questions; negotiating access to study sites; conducting multi-sited fieldwork; collecting and organizing data; critically analyzing data; using intersectional and/or transnational feminist frameworks throughout the research processes; and diffusing research findings to the broader public to initiate positive social transformations.

The “Transnational Ethnography” speaker series is part of an ongoing student-led initiative in the Urban Ethnography Lab called “Ethnographic Approaches,” which was established with the support of the Academic Enrichment Fund. In the 2018-2019 academic year, the “Critical Criminology” speaker series brought prominent scholars from across the U.S. to campus, including Nikki Jones (UC-Berkeley), Cecilia Menjívar (UCLA), and Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera (GMU).

This speaker series is organized by hosted by UT Austin graduate students Chen Liang (PhD student) and Ruijie Peng (PhD candidate). It is hosted by the Urban Ethnography Lab and generously supported by the Academic Enrichment Fund, Asian Studies Department, Center for Asian American Studies, Center for East Asian Studies, Center for Mexican American Studies, LLILAS and POSCO Chair in Korean Studies Endowment. If you need more information or would like to volunteer to support the events, please contact the student organizers Chen Liang (chenliang1224@utexas.edu) and Ruijie Peng (ruijie.peng@utexas.edu).

Ruijie Peng is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin. Ruijie researches labor, gender, race and ethnicity, political economy, development, global and transnational sociology. Her current research is a 15-month ethnographic study of home support and women’s labor against the backdrop of rural-urban migration in southwest China.

Academia, Gender and Sexuality

UT Austin sociology at SWS in Denver

March 6, 2019 jeo848 Leave a comment

by Jamie O’Quinn and Katie K. Rogers

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.

This year’s conference offered presentations, sessions, and workshops that engaged the theme of “Building Solidarity: Celebrating the Past, Navigating the Present, and Preparing for Our Futures.” 2019-2020 SWS President Tiffany Taylor (Kent State) convened plenary sessions on topics such as self care, implicit bias (for white SWS members) and surviving academia (for SWS members of color).

(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”

Jamie O’Quinn: Discussant, Roundtable on Sexuality

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.

Family Sociology, Gender and Sexuality, Political Sociology, University of Texas at Austin Sociology, Work, Occupations and Organizations

New book by department alum Caitlyn Collins

February 12, 2019 jeo848 Leave a comment

By Jamie O’Quinn

Caitlyn Collins, a UT Austin sociology PhD and now Assistant Professor at Washington University in St. Louis, is making waves with her brand-new book, Making Motherhood Work: How Women Manage Careers and Caregiving. This cross-cultural analysis is based on her dissertation research and explores the interconnectedness of motherhood, work, and the state across four countries: Germany, Italy, Sweden, and the United States.

Image result for making motherhood work — Princeton University Press

Caitlyn’s recent New York Times op-ed, “The Real Mommy War is Against the State”, details more about the book:

“In the course of my interviews, I discovered that American working mothers generally blame themselves for how hard their lives are. They take personal responsibility for problems that European mothers recognize as having external causes. The lesson here isn’t for overwhelmed American parents to look longingly across the Atlantic; it’s to emulate the Swedes, Germans and Italians by harboring the reasonable expectation that the state will help ….

‘Balance’ is a term that came up relentlessly in my conversations with women in the United States. But framing work-family conflict as a problem of imbalance is merely an individualized way to justify a nation of mothers engulfed in stress. It fails to recognize how institutions contribute to this anxiety.

The stress that American parents feel is an urgent political issue, so the solution must be political as well. We have a social responsibility to solve work-family conflict. Let’s start with paid paternal leave and high-quality, affordable child care as national priorities.”

Caitlyn’s call for us to use the sociological imagination and shift our focus from the individual to the institutional when it comes to parenting, gender, and labor is crucial in this current political moment. The stakes for paid parental leave are higher for communities of color since they already face systematic marginalization in the workforce, and state-funded social programs and services seem to occupy a more precarious space than ever in the weeks following the reopening of the U.S. government.

Caitlyn will be visiting the department on April 25th to discuss the book and will hold a workshop for graduate students in the Urban Ethnography Lab from 10-11:30am on how to conduct international ethnographic research. Please email me at joquinn@utexas.edu if you would like to RSVP for the workshop!

Jamie O’Quinn is a doctoral student in the Department of Sociology and the manager of the Urban Ethnography Lab at the University of Texas at Austin. Her research investigates state and institutional efforts to regulate young people’s sexualities. You can follow her on Twitter at @JamieOQuinn1.

Crime, Law and Deviance, Demography, Ethnography, Gender and Sexuality, Political Sociology, Race and Ethnicity, Sociology of Gender, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

Meet Our New NSF Awardees!

February 10, 2019 jeo848 Leave a comment

To add to an already incredible year of funding acceptances for the department, four UT Austin sociology graduate students have received dissertation awards from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Below is some information about their research, as well as their advice for future applicants.

Katie Kaufman Rogers

Katherine Rogers

Dissertation: “Breaking the Grass Ceiling: Gender, Race, and Class in the U.S. Legal Cannabis Industry”
Advisor: Christine Williams
Year in the program: 4

This project investigates how the emerging multibillion-dollar U.S. legal cannabis industry is stratified by race and gender. Employing the techniques of ethnographic assemblage (Collins 2017), this multi-method study uses content analysis, in-depth interviews, and field research in dispensaries to explore stratification in the emerging industry. This research will have theoretical implications for studies of gender, race, drug economies, and labor inequality, and contribute to policy debates around these issues.

What is some advice you would give students who are applying to NSF in the future?

My two pieces of advice are to get started early, so you have ample opportunity to revise the proposal, and to begin by reading successful proposals from past years, if you can. The NSF wants a particular style and framing and it helps to see examples.

Samantha Simon

Dissertation: “The Police Force: Gender, Race, and Use of Force Training in Police Academies”
Advisor: Christine Williams
Year in the program: 5

If you ask police officers why they chose a career in law enforcement, most will tell you that they wanted to help people and serve their community. These honorable motivations stand in stark contrast to the patterns of racially-biased and excessive force that have given rise to protest movements across the country. In this project, we examine police training to discern how high-minded ideals are transformed into the excessive use of force. At the academy, cadets are exposed to the institutional ideologies, practices, and embodiments of U.S. law enforcement, including when, how, and on whom they can or should use force, and thus, the academy is a key site of study to better understand why racially-biased and excessive force persists. In this study, I address three questions: (1) How do police departments decide who to hire? (2) How are police officers trained to use force? (3) What do the recruitment strategies and training practices reveal about how police departments conceptualize gender, race, and violence? I turn the focus away from explanations of police violence that point to officers’ individual racial biases, the purported necessity of using force in high-crime areas, or inadequate de-escalation training, to instead examine how the ways in which police departments choose applicants and train cadets may play a role in the use of excessive force. By focusing on training, this study will help scholars, policy makers, and police departments better understand how previous reform efforts – for example, increasing the racial and gender diversity of the police force, implementing de-escalation training, or requiring body cameras – may be ineffective, and will provide important insights into developing new approaches to training recruits.

What is some advice you would give students who are applying to NSF in the future?

I would definitely advise that anyone applying to NSF read as many past proposals as possible. Reviewing colleagues’ proposals gives great insight into how to structure the document, what kind of language to use, and how to frame the project.

Ilya Slavinski

Dissertation: “The Racialized and Gendered Governance of the Poor in Low Level Misdemeanor Courts”
Advisor: Becky Pettit
Year in the program: 4

There are about ten million misdemeanor cases every year in the United States, almost five times the amount of felony cases. Focusing on misdemeanor courts gives insight as to how the criminal justice system regulates and manages millions of people. This view goes against the dominant narrative that punishment has abandoned its productive functions and simply locks people away and warehouses them. Misdemeanor courtroom interactions suggest that courts regulate those that walk through its doors. Meanwhile, stringent court requirements and norms paradoxically make the fulfillment of court-mandated requirements more difficult sometimes even impossible. How do we reconcile such contradictory demands? Drawing on ethnographic methods, including participant observation of 15 misdemeanor courtrooms around Texas and interviews with misdemeanor court defendants, prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges, this project explores the ways in which misdemeanor courts actors and practices manage and regulate marginalized populations and how these populations react and resist to this regulation.

What is some advice you would give students who are applying to NSF in the future?

Read examples of winning submissions, don’t start from scratch! Use the resources in the department and the PRC [Population Research Center] that help with the process. Have colleagues and faculty read and give feedback before you submit.

Haley Stritzel

Dissertation: “Interagency Collaboration, Child Welfare Involvement, and its Consequences for Children and Families”
Advisors: Rob Crosnoe and Shannon Cavanagh
Year in the program: 4

The majority of child maltreatment reports received by child protective service agencies in the United States come from professionals such as teachers, healthcare providers, and social workers. Informal and formal data sharing between the child welfare system and other institutions thus facilitates the investigation of and intervention in cases of child maltreatment. One consequence of this collaboration, however, is that families may avoid institutions that provide necessary resources out of fear of coming into contact with the child welfare system. My research analyzes under what circumstances institutional engagement is associated with a greater likelihood of child protective services involvement, as well as how child protective services involvement is related to future institutional engagement. Exploring how interactions with the child welfare system constrain families’ willingness to access needed services sheds light on one understudied mechanism in the reproduction of social stratification. In addition, this project will generate practical suggestions for encouraging greater service uptake and collaboration between social service workers and clients.

What is some advice you would give students who are applying to NSF in the future?

The application itself looks really intimidating with all of the bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo. Don’t be afraid to ask for help with this part! Faculty and other staff who regularly deal with grants can help make this part much easier. Your most important job is to concentrate on describing the actual research.

___________________________________________________________________________

Applications for for the Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement Awards for sociology are due in October and are awarded based on four criteria:

(1) the theoretical grounding of the research

(2) the ability for the research to be empirically observed or validated

(3) the appropriateness of the research design to the questions asked

(4) the ability for the research to advance understanding of social processes, structures, and methods

Here’s to hoping for an equally successful round next year!

Ethnography, Political Sociology, Power, University of Texas at Austin Sociology

Maro Youssef in OpenDemocracy on State-Civil Society in Tunisia

November 19, 2018 jeo848 Leave a comment

UT Austin sociology doctoral student Maro Youssef has written an op-ed for OpenDemocracy on state-civil society in Tunisia.

She writes:

The Tunisian state appears both open and cautious to accommodating civil society.

Over the past few months, Tunisia has witnessed several victories for civil society, with the government making moves to promote gender equality in particular. Yet contradictory actions by the president’s office and parliament, which established a National Registry for Institutions on July 27, capture the Tunisian state’s appearance of being both open to and cautious about accommodating civil society during the democratic transition. […]

For Tunisia to reach its full democratic potential, the state must continue to strengthen its relationship with civil society and build trust with its leaders. The state must continue to listen to civil society grievances and consider their policy recommendations through formal mechanisms such as the Truth and Dignity Commission tasked with addressing past grievances and transitional justice. The state should also continue to engage civil society members and work with them on legislation as it did on the violence law.

UT Austin Sociology at ASA 2018!

August 11, 2018 jeo848 Leave a comment

The annual meeting of the American Sociological Association is here, with a strong showing from scholars from the UT Austin sociology department. For quick reference, we compiled a list of presentations, talks, discussions, and more featuring our own UT Austin sociologists:

Saturday, August 11th:

8:30 to 10:10am, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 4, 406

Emily Paine: “Embodied Disruption: Sorting Out Gender and Nonconformity in the Doctor’s Office”

8:30 to 10:10am, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 4, 405

Robert Ressler: “Can Community Nonprofits Help Children from Diverse Families Learn on a National Scale?”

10:30am to 12:10pm, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 4, Franklin Hall 9

Sharmila Rudrappa: “Reading Stuart Hall in (New) Times of Ultra-Right Nationalism”

10:30 to 11:30am, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 5, Salon G

Yiwen Wang: “Family SES and Depression among College Students in China: Mediating Effects of Self-efficacy and Interpersonal Relationships”

10:30am to 12:10pm, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 4, Franklin Hall 6

Amanda Bosky, Chandra Muller, Eric Grodsky, and John Robert Warren: “Preparing Students for an Advancing Economy: Academic Preparation and Exposure to Bad Occupations at Midlife”

2:30 to 3:30pm, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 5, Salon C

Jamie O’Quinn: “Responsibilizing Girls’ Sexualities: U.S. Child Marriage, Sexual Violence, and the Neoliberal State”

2:30 to 4:10pm, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 5, Salon G

Bola Sohn, “How Asian Americans Shape their Pathway Frame at the Intersection of Race, Class, and Social Capital”

2:30 to 4:10pm, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 4, Franklin Hall 2

Ori Swed, John Sibley Butler, and Connor Sheehan: “The Digital Divide and Veterans’ Health: Differences in Self-reported Health by Internet Usage”

4:30 to 6:10pm, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Level 100, 113C

“Shaping and Informing Public Conversations by Sharing Your Scholarship”

UT Panelist: Sharmila Rudrappa

_____________________________________________

Sunday, August 12th:

8:30 to 9:30am, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 5, Salon G

Aida Villanueva and Maria Carolina Mota Pereira Aragao: “Girls’ Domestic and Care Work in Brazil: Educational Consequences and Connections to Mothers’ Work”

8:30 to 10:10am, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Level 100, 104B

Nino Bariola: “The Peruvian Foodie Crowd and the Fields of Ethical Consumption”

10:30am to 12:10pm, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 4, 406

Eldad J. Levy: “Heroes, Villains, and Legacies of Modernization: Transforming Mexican Nationalism”

10:30am to 12:10pm, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Level 100, 113C

Michael Garcia: “Marital Strain and Psychological Distress in Same-Sex and Different-Sex Couples”

12:30 to 1:30pm, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 5, Salon G

Ari Adut: “Publicity and Common Knowledge”

12:30 to 2:10pm, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 4, 405

Ken-Hou Lin and Megan Tobias Neely: “American Life in Debt”

2:30 to 4:10pm, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Level 100, 104A

Koit Hung: “Private Troubles, Public Secrets: The Self-representation in Help-seeking Posts on Facebook”

_____________________________________________

Monday, August 13th:

8:30 to 10:10am, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 4, 404

Elizabeth Cozzolino: “Litigating Relationships: Gendered Conflicts in Child Support Court”

8:30 to 10:10am, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Level 100, 111B

Corinne Reczek, Alexandra Kissling, Lauren Elizabeth Gebhardt-Kram, and Debra Umberson: Gay, Lesbian, and Straight Spouses as the ‘Strong Arm’ of Health Care”

10:30am to 12:10pm, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Level 100, 111A

Shannon Malone Gonzalez, Katie Rogers, Jamie O’Quinn, Erika Slaymaker, and Jax J. Gonzalez: “Graduate Student Workshop on Collective Organizing”

10:30am to 12:10pm, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Level 100, 105AB

Mark Hayward: “Socioeconomic Inequalities in Health and Mortality”

10:30am to 12:10pm, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 4, 411

Maricarmen Hernandez: “Displaced into Toxicity: An Account of Unequal Toxic Exposures in the Latin American City”

10:30am to 12:10pm, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Level 100, 113C

Daniel Fridman: “Valuation and Meanings of Money in Psychoanalytical Treatment in Argentina”

10:30 to 11:30am, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Level 100, 113A

Marta Ascherio: “Sanctuary Policies and Crime: A County-level Investigation”

2:30 to 4:10pm, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 4, 413

Ori Swed, Thomas Crosbie, Jae Kwon, and Bryan Feldscher: “The Corporate War Dead: New Perspectives on the Demographics of American and British Contractors”

2:30 to 4:10pm, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 4, Franklin Hall 5

Shannon Malone Gonzalez: “Black Girls and the Talk: Policing, Parenting, and the (re)Production of Hegemonic Illegibility”

2:30 to 4:10pm, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 4, 414

Christine Williams: “The Deserving Professional: Instability and Inequality in the Oil and Gas Industry”

_____________________________________________

Tuesday, August 14th:

8:30 to 10:10am, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Level 100, 107AB

Celeste Curington, Jennifer Hickes Lundquist, and Ken-Hou Lin: “Reinforcing the Boundaires of Whiteness and Blackness: The Racial Preferences of Multiracial Online Daters”

8:30 to 10:10am, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Level 100, 105AB

Sarah Brayne: “Technologies of Crime Prediction: Comparing the Reception of Big Data Analytics in Policing and Courts”

10:30am to 12:10pm, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Level 100, 105AB

Rachel Donnelly: “How Precarious Employment in Midlife Shapes Health”

10:30am to 12:10pm, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 4, Franklin Hall 6

“Is the Sociology of Mental Health at a Crossroads? Some Historical Reflections and Where We Go from Here”

UT Panelists: Debra Umberson, Tetyana Putrovska

10:30am to 12:10pm, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Level 100, 104B

Jennifer Karas Montez, Mark Hayward, and Anna Zajacova: “Educational Disparities in Adult Health: U.S. States as Institutional Actors on the Association”

10:30am to 12:10pm, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 4, 414

Pamela Paxton, Nicholas Reith, Melanie Hughes, and Wade Cole: “Entering World Society: A Research Note on Measurement and Statistical Modeling”

10:30am to 12:10pm, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 5, Salon H

Jess Goldstein-Kral: “Transgender Theory, Queer Measurements, Cisgender Subjects: Discordant Perceptions of Gender and Marital Quality”

Katie Rogers: “Breaking the Grass Ceiling: Colorblind Discourses of Diversity, Professionalism, and Morality in U.S. Legal Cannabis”

12:30 to 2:10pm, Philadelphia Marriott Downtown, Level 4, 409

Karen Lee: “Multi-Group Attitudes towards Contemporary Black Political Action”

Abigail Weitzman, Leticia Marteleto, and Raquel Coutinho: “Socioeconomic Status and Risk Perceptions: Evidence from the Zika Epidemic in Brazil”

12:30 to 2:10pm, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Level 100, 104B

Andrew Krebs: “Boundary Spanners’ Burden: Exploring the Perspectives of Psychiatric Treatment Providers Working in Texas Jails”

2:30 to 4:10pm, Pennsylvania Convention Center, Level 100, 113B

Lilla Pivnick: ” Using Twitter to Investigate Gendered Job-related Stress among U.S. Teachers”

UT Austin SOC

All posts by jeo848

On the Market: Robert Ressler

Katherine Hill’s research featured in Work in Progress

UEL Speaker Series “Transnational Ethnography: Interconnected Lives and Social Processes”

UT Austin sociology at SWS in Denver

New book by department alum Caitlyn Collins

Meet Our New NSF Awardees!

Katie Kaufman Rogers

Samantha Simon

What is some advice you would give students who are applying to NSF in the future?

Ilya Slavinski

Haley Stritzel

What is some advice you would give students who are applying to NSF in the future?

Maro Youssef in OpenDemocracy on State-Civil Society in Tunisia

UT Austin Sociology at ASA 2018!

Graduate Sociology Blog