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Department of Sociology Newsletter

Issue 12: January 24, 2022

 

Welcome Back!

Happy 2022, a few weeks late!  I hope this newsletter finds you all well and rested after a well-deserved winter break. I know the Omicron surge has put yet another monkey wrench in our plans but I hope you are hanging in there. We are surely living in strange times.

I'm happy to be back after a good research leave and look forward to seeing and working with you all. We all owe a huge debt of gratitude to Paul McLean for his excellent stewardship of the department over the past six months.  Thank you, Paul.

We had a busy and exciting fall semester interviewing candidates for two positions, one in crime and social control and the other in environmental sociology.  I am thrilled to share with you that Danielle Falzon and Kevin Dagaghi will join our department in Fall 2022 and Fall 2023, respectively.  They are wonderful additions to our department as we continue our rebuilding efforts.

We have a busy semester ahead. Highlights include a fantastic spring speaker series organized by Joanna Kempner, Lei Lei, Quan Mai, Dawne Mouzon, Zakia Salime and Fred Traylor.  I am also especially looking forward to the Masters Thesis presentations of our very own students in early February. We can anticipate a celebratory event welcoming back a number of alumni to honor Eviatar Zerubavel on his retirement on April 22.  Details on all these events can be found below. Last but certainly not least, we anticipate finally being able to gather for a memorial and celebration of Pat Carr's life on May 6 at Rutgers Gardens, with a reception to follow at Paul McLean's house.  Please look out for details on this special event.

Thank you to former colleagues and friends who took the time to share updates and news.  We love hearing from you!  Please continue to stay in touch.

I wish you all the best for a good and safe spring semester.
 
Julie Phillips
Department Chair
 
Faculty Spotlight
Ali Chaudhary joined us in January 2017. Ali has been an energetic presence in our department and we love having him as our colleague. You can learn more about Ali and his research interests in this issue's Faculty Spotlight.
Tell us a little bit about your research.
 
My research, teaching, and scholarship lie at the intersection of migration studies, the sociology of race and ethnic minorities, and cultural sociology. Much of my research explores the multi-scalar significance of ascriptive categories such as race, ethnicity, and nationality as they shape the lived experiences of individuals, communities, and organizations in North America and Western Europe. I'm a strong proponent of comparative and mixed-methods research and regularly use surveys and ethnographic data in my scholarship. Accordingly, my past work deploys a comparative approach to studying immigrant-led non-profit organizations and migrants' electoral and non-electoral behaviors. More recently, I've working to cultivate new synergies between cultural sociology and the sociology of race and immigration. To this end, I've been using a critical intersectionality approach to investigate the significance of ascriptive categories in the production, consumption, and performance of art, music, and popular culture. I've recently published an article on the effects of segregation-era advertising practices on the social construction of the electric guitar and am leading a new study on the unequal consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic on professional musicians in metropolitan New York City.
 
How did you become interested in sociology?
 
I think I secretly started my training in sociology at a very young age. My experience as a 1.5 generation child and teenager in Southern California during the 1980s and 1990s made me acutely aware of the significance of race in American life. The 1992 Los Angeles Riots were a pivotal moment in the shaping of my sociological imagination as the events left me disillusioned by the narratives of meritocracy and post-Civil Rights discourses of equality and colorblindness. However, my journey in sociology did not begin until I took an undergraduate course on the sociology of race and ethnic relations. The professor and her assigned course readings inspired me. Later this inspiration and the same professor mentored and guided me towards doctoral studies in sociology. The significance of this undergraduate sociology course in my own trajectory motivates me to inspire new generations of sociologists every time I'm in the classroom. 
 
Tell us about your teaching interests and your plans for any new courses.
 
I enjoy teaching comparative migration studies, the history of immigration in the United States, and sociological theorizing. I am also really excited about a new graduate-level seminar I'm teaching this semester that emphasizes the production and consumption of popular culture, the arts, and music. The course readings seek to cultivate synergies between cultural sociology and other subfields, including race, gender, and migration studies, among others. 
 
What book do you wish everyone would read?
 
The one book I think every sociologist should read is the most recent edition of Omi and Winant's Racial Formation in the United States. The book has remained significant in the sociology of race, ethnicity, and immigration for nearly four decades. Moreover, it still offers an overview of the key concepts used in contemporary scholarship related to race, ethnicity, and immigrant integration in North America. 
 
And finally, what do you like to do in your free time?
 
In my free time, I enjoy being outdoors as much as possible (hiking, running, cycling, meditating). I also play the guitar. I started studying and performing jazz guitar in university ensembles alongside my academic research when I started graduate school. While I've taken several "sabbaticals" from performing (before and during the pandemic), I have been performing regularly for the past year in Highland Park and New Brunswick.  
Dissertation Defenses
Congratulations to Stephanie Pena-Alves, who defended her dissertation this past December. She presented her work entitled "In and Out: Inclusion, Exclusion, and the Formal Politics of Access"
Stephanie's committee: Eviatar Zerubavel (Chair), Zaire Dinzey-Flores, Mary Chayko, Deborah Carr
 
Doctoral Degrees 2021-2022
Congratulations!
Tsai-Yen Han - October '21
Alexandra Gervis - October '21
Irina Nicorici - October '21
Stephanie Pena-Alves January '22
Graduate Student Awards
Endia Louise Hayes earned her Master's Degree in October '21. She is also the recipient of the 2021 SAS Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Education.

 
Congratulations, Endia and thank you!
Armani Beck-McField is the recipient of the Harry C Bredemeier Teaching Award.
 
Congratulations, Armani and
thank you for your contributions to our undergraduate program!
Master's Panels    
 
We are delighted to host the second annual Masters Day Panel this Spring semester on February 2nd.  All students who have recently completed their Masters Thesis are invited to present their work to the department. Please join us as we welcome this year's panel which will feature the following students:
 

Marilyn Baffoe-Bonnie
"
Lived Experience with Sickle Cell Disease: Predictors of Altruistic Participation in Clinical Research"

Yung-Ying Chang
"A Bottom-up Approach to Affective Citizenship: How Global K-pop Fans Develop Political Commitments"

Brent Hoagland
"The Institutionalization of Categories and Local Distinctions: local meaning structures and their influence on the production of inequality"


 
Publications
Professor Karen A. Cerulo and graduate alumna Professor Janet M. Ruane published "Future Imaginings: Public Culture, Personal Culture, Social Location and the Shaping of Dreams" in a special issue of Sociological Forum entitled "Culture and Cognition: New Approaches and New Applications." (December 2021)

Maria Espinoza published an article from her second qualifying paper "Conflicting diagnostic and prognostic framing of epidemics? Newspaper representations of dengue as public health problem in Peru" in Social Science and Medicine.

Norah MacKendrick published an op-ed in the Guardian "Your fast food wrappers contain toxic chemicals.  Why is that allowed?"

Quan Mai has two forthcoming publications:
  • Larry Isaac, Jonathan Coley*, Quan Mai*, and Anna Jacobs. Forthcoming. “Striking News: Discursive Power of the Press as Capitalist Resource in Gilded Age Strikes.” Forthcoming in American Journal of Sociology.  
  •  Jonathan Coley* and Quan Mai*. Forthcoming. “The Ecology of Environmental Association: Density, Spillover, Competition, and Membership in Sierra Club, 1984-2016.” Forthcoming in Sociological Focus.  
Hana Shepherd 
  • Published an article on the implementation of anti-bullying law in New Jersey with alumna Idit Fast, which we worked on while Idit was a graduate student, “Administering New Anti-Bullying Law: The Organizational Field and School Variation During Initial Implementation”, is forthcoming in Law and Social Inquiry
  • Published an article on how organizational practices common in precarious work affect social network ties, “Organizational practices and workplace relationships in precarious work: New survey evidence” is in press at Social Networks and is part of a special issue on network ecology. This work was included in a Vox article on the negative social effects of work schedules:
  • Along with colleagues at NYU and Berkeley published a paper on racism during the COVID-19 pandemic in Sociological Forum, Does Pandemic Threat Stoke Xenophobia? How COVID-19 Influenced California Voters' Attitudes toward Diversity and Immigration in April 2020.”
  • And, a chapter on the relationship between inequality and networks coauthored with Filiz Garip, “The Context of Network Inequality” has been published in the edited volume, Personal Networks: Classic Readings and New Directions in Egocentric Analysis.
Congratulations Tsai-Yen!



Tsai-Yen Han accepted an offer in the National Academy for Educational Research (Taiwan) as a Postdoctoral Research fellow January 2022.


 
Undergraduate News
Mark the date!  The Sociology Commencement Ceremony will be held on May 16th at the Kathleen Ludwig Building.  We look forward to celebrating with you and your families then.  We are optimistic we will be able to do so in person and we can't wait!
Alumni News
A. Aneesh was selected as a 2020-2021 Berggruen Fellow at the University of Southern California’s Center on Science, Technology, and Public Life this year. Recently, he was featured in CNN’s series on Y2K: https://www.cnn.com/videos/business/2020/12/10/fixing-the-bug-y2k.cnn. Also, his article “Citizenship is a Myth” was published in Noema magazine.
 

Analena Bruce (PI) was awarded a $300K Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) grant from the USDA NIFA for her team’s project: “Increasing Consumer Participation In Alternative Food Networks To Support Small And Medium-Sized Farms.” 

Flagg, Julia A. and Thomas K. Rudel. 2021. "Uneven Ambitions: Explaining National Differences in Proposed Emissions Reductions." Human Ecology Review 27(1): 23-46. 

Johanna Foster co-authored an Academe article for this winter's issue that may be of interest.  

Michael Plekon's published a book entitled Community as church, church as community, Eugene OR: Cascade, 2021.

Nancy Whelchel (Ph.D., 1992), was promoted to Assistant Vice Provost for Institutional Survey Research and Analysis at NC State University.

 

Professor Karen A. Cerulo and graduate alumna Professor Vanina Leschziner co-edited a special issue of Sociological Forum entitled "Culture and Cognition: New Approaches and New Applications." (December 2021)

Quan Mai was featured in an interview with Sick Individuals/Sick Populations, Interdisciplinary Association for Population Health Science Podcast.
 
Hana Shepherd was awarded two grants 
  • With colleagues in the Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations and in political science at Northwestern University, Hana was awarded a grant from the Washington Center for Equitable Growth to study how regional variation in enforcement of employment protections like minimum wage laws shapes racial disparities in income: “Unequal Protections: Regional Disparities in Labor Standards Policies, Enforcement, and Violations".
  • received a grant from the Rutgers Research Council to continue work with Jenny Enos, initially funded through the Gretel Weiss grant, on perceptions of norms about racist public demonstrations, “Sources of Perceptions of Racial Norms: A Conjoint Survey Experiment.”
Please share your news and events for inclusion in the next department newsletter.
 
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