Special Sessions | American Sociological Association

The Annual Meeting Program Committee is pleased to announce the Special Session line up for the 2024 Annual Meeting. Special Sessions focus on new areas of sociological work or other timely topics which may or may not relate to the theme. They generally address sociological issues, whether in research or its application, of importance to the discipline or of interest beyond.

Anti-Asian Violence in the 21st Century

The papers in this invited session engage in important research on the experiences of Asian Americans and anti-Asian hate, violence, and injustice, especially in the context of (but not limited to) the Covid-19 pandemic. These presentations will explore different sociological dynamics related to institutional structures of difference, individual conceptualizations of hate, community responses to injustice, and addressing the trauma associated with such incidents of victimization.

Participants: (Session Organizer) C.N. Le, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; (Presider) C.N. Le, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; (Discussant) C.N. Le, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

The Racial Trauma and Moral Injury of Anti-Asian Hate, Russell M. Jeung, San Francisco State University
Beyond Contagion: Lessons from Asian American Experiences During COVID-19, Christina Ong, University of Pittsburgh
Help-Seeking After Anti-Asian Hate Crime Victimization: An Intersectional Analysis, Ráchael Powers, University of South Florida
Who Believes There Is Anti-Asian Discrimination? Personal Experience and Racial Differences in Perception of Anti-Asian Racism, Cary Wu, York University

Between Integration and Inequality – The Young Adult Children of Immigrants in New Destinations

As large numbers of the children of Latina/o/x immigrants have come of age in new destination locations, there is a necessity to analyze their social trajectories as influenced by communities without a prior history of receiving these groups. This session brings together a group of scholars who have examined young people of various legal statuses as they transitioned from high school to college and beyond in Indiana, Massachusetts, New York, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Utah. Despite surpassing multiple markers of integration, these young people are still subject to much racialization and other inequalities which could have derailed their educational trajectories. To surmount these constraints along their transition to college, the young adults across these research projects had to seek out multiple sources of support to continue their path toward integration. These dynamics will be highlighted in this interdisciplinary panel discussion to expand our empirical and theoretical understanding of how this group’s social characteristics and communities of settlement interact to produce their educational and broader social trajectories and what these outcomes mean in our national sociopolitical context.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Jorge Ballinas, Pennsylvania State University; (Panelist) Jorge Ballinas, Pennsylvania State University; (Panelist) Liliana Castrellon, Duquesne University; (Panelist) Andrea Flores, Brown University; (Panelist) Nicole Perez, University of Illinois at Chicago; (Presider) Jorge Ballinas, Pennsylvania State University; (Panelist) Alessandra Bazo Vienrich, Rhode Island College

Beyond Land Acknowledgements

The use of land acknowledgements in the US and Canada play a role in combatting settler colonialism and disrupting the narrative of Indigenous erasure. Land acknowledgements take a moment to recognize that Indigenous persons and peoples are the original caretakers of the land and that Indigenous peoples have been and are often currently dispossessed of and displaced from the land. Land acknowledgements are also often criticized to be performative and not a substantive action in correcting the long-standing injustice of stolen land. The session will highlight how Indigenous and ally scholars have viewed and used land acknowledgements as starting place for meaningful conversations with Indigenous peoples and to create substantive and innovative partnerships and coalitions to address the concerns of Indigenous peoples and communities. The goal of the dialogue generated from the session will be provide praxis oriented approaches to encouraging institutions and individuals to move past performative gestures to substantive action and will also feature public sociology efforts to engage community to amplify Indigenous-centered needs and desired outcomes.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Dwanna L. McKay, Colorado College; (Session Organizer) Kimberly R. Huyser, University of British Columbia; (Presider) Kimberly R. Huyser, University of British Columbia; (Panelist) Dwanna L. McKay, Colorado College; (Panelist) Kyle Wilmott, Simon Fraser University; (Panelist) Laurel R. Davis-Delano, Springfield College; (Panelist) (Panelist) Allison Ramirez Madia, Yale University; (Panelist) Jeffrey Steven Denis, McMaster University

Critical Race Theory as a Weapon For and Against Justice

It is no surprise that Critical Race Theory (CRT)—an intellectual school of thought originated by Black legal scholars the likes of Derrick Bell and Kimberlé Crenshaw and advanced across a number of fields in the social sciences and humanities, has relied heavily on contributions from sociologists to outline the stakes of CRT in studies of inequality and injustice for racialized people. This panel, which discusses CRT from the lens of its stakes in public sociology, professional sociology, intersectionality, and queer theory, centers sociology’s Du Boisian roots as an inherently anti-racist and race-critical field which contemporary sociologists should not only reclaim, but weaponize for justice causes.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Saida Grundy, Boston University; (Presider) Camille S Grundy; (Panelist) John Eason, Brown University/Urban Institute; (Panelist) Prabhdeep Singh Kehal, University of Wisconsin-Madison; (Panelist) Monica C. Bell, Yale University; (Panelist) Nicole Gonzalez Van Cleve, Brown University

“Doing Things Together”: Joy and Justice in Becker’s Social Worlds

Sociology, as Howard Becker succinctly put it, is the study of people “doing things together.” This panel will focus on the different ways in which this precept has influenced the sociological practice and thinking, from the study of race and racism and questions of justice, through the study of art and social worlds, and into questions of sociological methodology. Throughout, the panel will focus on the duality of Becker’s notion of “doing things together”—the joy of thinking and conducting research on the one hand, but also the dark side of collective acts, where “others” are labeled, and where discrimination and persecution can emerge.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Iddo Tavory, New York University; (Presider) Iddo Tavory, New York University; (Panelist) Elijah Anderson, Yale University; (Panelist) Daniel Cefaï, Center for the Study of Social Movements, EHESS; (Panelist) Marjorie L. DeVault, Syracuse University; (Panelist) Harvey L. Molotch, New York University

Gender Backlash in Global Perspective

Recent decades have seen a rise in groups and coalitions mobilizing against the perceived excesses and dangers of gender, often as part of a broader rightwing populist politics. Scholars have used a variety of terms to describe such reactions, including gender backlash, anti-genderism, and gender panics. This session brings together scholars who explore these political struggles over gender, analyze connections to other dimensions of power, and sometimes challenge the very concept of backlash itself. The challenge to gender may appear at a variety of levels—from everyday life to national politics—and may be more or less ambiguous in its goals.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Sidra Kamran, Lewis & Clark College; (Session Organizer) Isabel Pike, McGill University; (Presider) Anna Wozny, Princeton University & Tokyo College

Progress for Whom? How LGBT+ Legal Victories at Home Increase U.S. ‘Pro-Family’ Organizations’ International Spending, Kristopher Velasco, Princeton University
From Microfinance to Mission Shakti: Elevating “Women” While Erasing “Gender” in Neoliberal India, Smitha Radhakrishnan, Wellesley College
Angry Young Korean Men: Antifeminist Politics in an Age of Precarity, Myungji Yang, University of Hawaii-Manoa
Gendered Modernity and Russian War on Ukraine, Cinzia D Solari, University of Massachusetts-Boston
Intersectional Backlash and the Gendered Language of Grievance: the case of Kenya’s Boy Child, Isabel Pike, McGill University

Global Islamophobia in the Era of Right-wing Nationalisms

The past few decades have witnessed the rise of right-wing nationalisms in various countries including the US, UK, Poland, Italy, France, Russia, Australia, Hungary, India, Brazil, Philippines, among others. Among the many features that unite the right in these different countries are a disregard for secular democratic ideals and racialized anti-immigrant rhetoric, coupled with hetero-patriarchal, Islamophobic arguments and policies. This session will focus on global Islamophobia in the context of this resurgence of the right. Panelists would explore the genesis of global Islamophobia in the current era, the routes it takes to travel across the globe, the gendered-racialized nature of Islamophobia and the political-economy within which right-wing hatred of Islam and Muslims continues to thrive. The session will aim to cover instances of Islamophobia in both the Global North and South and explore the relationships between its local and global manifestations. The panel will discuss the transnational nature of Islamophobia as well the rise of global solidarity movements against it.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Debadatta Chakraborty, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; (Session Organizer) Fareen Parvez, University of Massachusetts-Amherst; (Presider) Fareen Parvez, University of Massachusetts-Amherst; (Panelist) Deepa Kumar, Rutgers University; (Panelist) Abdellali Hajjat, Université libre de Bruxelles; (Panelist) Marwan Mohammed, CNRS (French National Center for Scientific Research)/John Jay College of Criminal Justice; (Panelist) Gilles Verniers, Ashoka University/Amherst College

Global Research on Climate Change

Climate change is one of the most challenging global problems today, and the unprecedented impacts are severe in every region of the planet. With potential continued average global temperature increases, the impacts are expected to become more visible, pressing, and drastic. A 1.5 °C rise in global temperature will cause unpredictable changes to weather patterns and initiate disastrous effects. Climate change has also substantially influenced various social-economic outcomes. Warming of 4 °C above pre-industrial levels is estimated to cause economic damages ranging from a 1% to 5% annual global GDP loss by 2100. To respond to the global crisis, cross-national research is indispensable. Sociologists have made significant strides in understanding how social arrangements and patterns contribute to climate change and how they are shaped by its consequences. In this session, we aim to bring together scholars studying the human dimensions of climate change from a global perspective to discuss papers addressing the cross-national dimension of the climate change crisis. The topics include anthropogenic factors that lead to GHG emissions, sustainable development, public perception of climate change, and driving forces that contribute to the implementation of climate policies.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Feng Hao, University of South Florida; (Presider) Feng Hao, University of South Florida; (Discussant) Andrew K. Jorgenson, The University of British Columbia

Techno Optimism v. Pessimism As Predictors of Climate Change Concern, Joshua Franklin Doyle, Purdue University
Power Density, and the Convergence of Technical and Behavioral Challenges in Sustainable Transitions, Patrick Trent Greiner, Vanderbilt University
An Exploration of Steep Mitigation Commitments in a Cross-National Context, Julia Flagg, Connecticut College
Beyond climate adaptation: Core strategies of restitution to address losses and damages in global climate governance, David M. Ciplet, University of Colorado Boulder
Responsibility for Climate Change from a Demographic Perspective, Mathew Hauer, Florida State University

Ida B. Wells, Anna J. Cooper, Sylvia Wynter, and Irene Diggs in the Construction of Intersectional Solidarities

This panel has two fundamental purposes. The first is to demonstrate how Black women intellectuals Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Anna Julia Cooper, Sylvia Wynter, and Irene Diggs contributed significantly to the development of social science, particularly sociology, during the twentieth century. The research of these four women pioneered the construction of a global sociology of racial capitalism, the connections between colonial, racial, and gendered forms of violence and domination, and the construction of a sociology of emancipation. Their work crucially departed from hegemonic methodological nationalistic conceptions, and they understood global entanglements rooted in colonial and imperial histories as constitutive for sociological analysis.

The second purpose is to problematize the positionality of Wells-Barnett, Cooper, Wynter, and Diggs in the sociological debates of their time and within the power dynamics that shaped a sociological canon that excludes the leading role of Black women and those works on and from the world majorities. Thus, the presentations on this panel argue how their work is critical to the development of intersectional solidarities and the future of Black feminist sociology.

(Session Organizer) Michelle Randall, American Sociological Association; (Session Organizer) Jorge Daniel Vasquez, American University; (Presider) Jorge Daniel Vasquez, American University; (Discussant) Ali Meghji, University of Cambridge

‘The Gods Help Those Who Help Themselves’ —Historicizing Religion through Abominable Agency in the Sociology of Ida B Wells-Barnett, Q Aunrika Tucker-Shabazz, University of Michigan Ann Arbor
‘We Come Here Not to Talk’—Revisiting the Work of Anna Julia Cooper: An Analysis of Standpoint Theory and Her Placement in the Academic Canon, Kimberly Phillips, Memorial University
‘Ontological Sovereignty’ and Regional Sovereignty: S. Wynter’s Early Work and Education between London and the West Indies, Meta Cramer
Irene Diggs and the Sociological Critique of Race and Gender in the Americas, Jorge Daniel Vasquez, American University

Immigrant Rights and Wrongs

Immigrant rights have been under attack across the globe, even as climate change, war, and economic collapses have made migration an increasingly important survival strategy for more than 250 million people. In this session, researchers will discuss immigrant rights across the globe, as well as efforts to reduce those rights, and the role of sociology for suggesting new avenues and strategies for supporting immigrants.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Celeste Curington, Boston University; (Presider) Celeste Curington, Boston University; (Panelist) Jean Beaman, University of California-Santa Barbara; (Panelist) Onoso Ikphemi Imoagene, New York University Abu Dhabi (NYUAD); (Panelist) Cecilia Menjivar, University of California-Los Angeles; (Panelist) Rhacel Salazar Parrenas, University of Southern California; (Panelist) Elena Shih, Brown University

Intersectional Approaches to Societal Health

Health is central to both justice and hope in communities. Sociological approaches to health and healthcare can have particularly transformative impact when they bring a macro-level perspective or take an intersectional approach that looks beyond individual sub-populations, geographic locations, or disease conditions. This session features the work of sociologists taking on this challenge from a range of angles, from studies of how healthcare systems serve and exclude migrants and people with disabilities, to re-examinations of how medical and public health knowledge is created and evaluated, and how it contributes to social inequality.

Participants: (Session Organizer, Presider and Discussant) Tasleem Juana Padamsee, The Ohio State University

The Third Net: Infrastructure of Migrant Patient Dumping, Lisa Sun-Hee Park, University of California, Santa Barbara
Health and Disability: Navigating the Medical and Social Models of Disability across Diverse Communities, Allison C. Carey, Shippensburg University
The Matters of Fat Black Health, Courtney J. Patterson-Faye, Wesleyan University
Countering Epistemic Parochialism: Turning the Sociological Gaze Beyond the United States, Joseph A. Harris, Boston University

It’s Not Navel-gazing or Me-search: Autoethnography in Sociology

There is a longstanding Black feminist autoethnographic tradition of embracing experiential knowledge. Yet, sociologists often dismiss autoethnographic methods as illegitimate. Sociologists often discourage graduate students, for example, from engaging in what some pejoratively call me-search or from navel-gazing, arguing that personal experience and emotion are antithetical to so-called academic or theoretical rigor. Roundtable participants, from different career stages and social locations, will discuss how autoethnography is vital to knowledge production and disrupting modes of power in academic writing that actively silence Black and Brown, poor, disabled, and trans people. Specifically, panelists will discuss 1) autoethnography as a sociological method and why many in sociology remain dismissive, 2) how they have used it in their work, and 3) why autoethnography is particularly well-suited to study the intersections of race, class, ability, gender, and sexuality.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Angela Jones, SUNY-Farmingdale; (Panelist) Jacob Wesley Richardson, University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign; (Panelist) Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, American University; (Panelist) Shantel Gabrieal Buggs, Florida State University; (Panelist) S. L. Crawley, University of South Florida; (Presider) Nia Janelle Baker, University of Virginia

Navigating Indigenous Identities in the Settler Colonial State

Indigenous Peoples across Turtle Island (North America) lead complex social lives, navigating Indigenous identities within the context of both tribal and settler colonial spaces. Drawing from the rich experiences of Indigenous Peoples living in the United States and Canada specifically, this panel discussion will highlight the ways in which Indigenous lives understand and resist the confines of settler colonialism and Western ways of knowing. Panelists will emphasize the intellectual and community spaces that nourish their learning, and explain how these relationships facilitate critical knowledge production beyond the limits of arms-length empiricism. Throughout, the discussion will engage with the multi-dimensional ways in which Indigenous identities take shape in relationship with the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabeg, Huron/Wendat, and Abenaki lands upon which we gather and the settler social structures that exist there now.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Theresa Rocha Beardall, University of Washington; (Session Organizer) Kimberly R. Huyser, University of British Columbia; (Panelist) Kimberly R. Huyser, University of British Columbia; (Panelist) Michelle M. Jacob, University of Oregon; (Panelist) Hunter Sagaskie; (Panelist) Kyrie Tristary, Assembly of First Nations; (Presider) Theresa Rocha Beardall, University of Washington; (Panelist) Allison Ramirez Madia, Yale University

Non-binary Gender – State Categories and Lived Experiences

This special session aims to bring together practitioners working to incorporate nonbinary gender measures into national censuses, surveys, and administrative data collection with qualitative researchers working to document the lived experiences of people who identify beyond the gender binary. These cross-methodological conversations are crucial to moving forward research and data collection in this growing area of scholarship. Our meeting in Montreal offers a fortuitous opportunity to feature this discussion as Canada was the first nation to publish nonbinary gender data (in 2022).

Participants: (Session Organizer) Aliya Saperstein, Stanford University; (Presider) Aliya Saperstein, Stanford University

Gender Diversity in Canada, France-Pascale Menard, Statistics Canada
Moving Beyond the Binary in U.S. Federal Statistics on Gender, Jennifer Ortman, U.S. Census Bureau; Christina Natasha Dragon, National Institutes of Health Sexual & Gender Minority Research Office
Two Spirit Identity in a Time of Gender Fluidity, Margaret Robinson, Dalhousie University
Nonbinary Experience in Gender-expansive Families, Elizabeth Rahilly, Georgia Southern University

Pandemic and AI Impacts on Teaching

The significant public health and technological changes since 2020 have profoundly impacted every facet of higher education. This panel discussion brings together educators from a range of institutions and professional stages to address the impacts that the pandemic and AI have had on teaching. Topics to be explored will include how to implement empathy and empathetic practices in the classroom, incorporate AI to work for you and not against you, reassessment of the concept of rigor in the classroom, how to create community and engagement in the classroom, as well as other specific examples of how the pandemic and AI have changed the classroom experience and pedagogical approaches. The panel will be guided in a dialogue about how they have approached these changes and will be called on to offer specific tools the audience can implement.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Elizabeth Ziff, University of Indianapolis; (Session Organizer) Myron T. Strong, Community College of Baltimore County; (Presider) Elizabeth Ziff, University of Indianapolis; (Panelist) Mario R. Hernandez, Mills College; (Panelist) Amanda Jayne Miller, University of Indianapolis; (Panelist) Jacob Wesley Richardson, University of Illinois – Urbana-Champaign; (Panelist) Colleen Elizabeth Wynn, University of Indianapolis

Reexamining Truth in the Era of Post-Truth

We are said to be in the era of “post-truth” in which objective truth no longer matters and fake news prevails. But what is objective truth? Where is the objectivity of truth grounded? And what does unbiased journalism look like? The sociology of knowledge has argued that all forms of social knowledge, including journalist reports, are socially constructed, and the strong program for the sociology of science has gone even further, arguing that all forms of human knowledge, including scientific truth, are socially constructed.

The advent of the post-truth era forces the sociologists of knowledge to reexamine the following issues: What is truth? What is the difference between truth and post-truth, fact and fiction, or science and pseudoscience? If truth is objective, what about the influence of social factors on the human pursuit of knowledge? Doesn’t the social construction of knowledge remove the objective foundation of truth? Sociologists have a lot to contribute to the understanding of these important issues. The proposed special session aims to provide a forum for discussing those questions in an effort to gain new insights into the relationships among knowledge, society, and human existential activity.

Participants: (Session Organizer and Presider) Shanyang Zhao, Temple University; (Discussant) Ezra Zuckerman Sivan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

The Promiscuity of Facts: Uncertain Knowledge and the Search for Truth, Gary Alan Fine, Northwestern University
Five “Truths” about Truth, Douglas Porpora, Drexel University
The Social Conditions for Truth, Ann Swidler, University of California-Berkeley
When Does Truth Matter? Pulses of Attachment and Detachment in Advertising Work, Iddo Tavory, New York University
Toward a Conception of Perceptual Truth, Shanyang Zhao, Temple University
How Can We Get Facts to Matter When All We Care about Is Truth? Ezra Zuckerman Sivan, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Reproductive Justice and Autonomy Post-Dobbs

Reproductive justice principles emphasize the human right to bodily autonomy and the capacity to choose whether, when, and how to have and raise children. The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs vs. Jackson Women’s Health Organization (2022) to eliminate federal protection for the right to abortion violates these core principles. The panelists for this thematic session will explore the implications of the Dobbs decision for reproductive justice and autonomy.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Emily S. Mann, University of South Carolina-Columbia; (Presider) Emily S. Mann, University of South Carolina-Columbia

The Failure of Dobbs: The Entanglement of Abortion Bans, Criminalized Pregnancies, and Forced Family Separation, Dorothy E. Roberts, University of Pennsylvania
We Change the World When We Center the Well-Being of Black Women, Crystal Hayes, Sacred Heart University
How Abortion Funds Shape Change in the New Abortion Bureaucracy, Aalap Ooha Bommaraju, University of Cincinnati
Contraceptive Coercion Post-Dobbs, Emily S. Mann, University of South Carolina-Columbia; Kathleen Broussard, University of South Carolina
Measuring Contraceptive Autonomy, Leigh Gabrielle Senderowicz, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Social and Behavioral Science Training, Career Development, and Research Funding Opportunities at the NIH

The goal of this session is to inform the sociology community about the role of social and behavioral sciences at the NIH, and about training, career development, and funding opportunities available to them to conduct research on health and well-being across the life course. The audience will receive an overview of the fundamentals of NIH application and review processes, including the timeline for application submission, review, and funding, tips for developing a Specific Aims page, and when to interact with an NIH program official and scientific review officer. The panelists—who include program officials, scientific review officers, and social science analysts—will also describe initiatives and funding opportunities aimed at enhancing the diversity of the NIH-supported research workforce, for individuals across career stages from the undergraduate to faculty level.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Emerald Nguyen, National Institutes of Health; (Presider) Emerald Nguyen, National Institutes of Health; (Panelist) Juanita J. Chinn, US Department of Health and Human Services; (Panelist) Alfonso R. Latoni, Division of Extramural Research and Training; (Panelist) Mercedes Rubio, National Institutes of Health; (Panelist) Jean H. Shin, National Institutes of Health; (Panelist) Emerald Nguyen, National Institutes of Health

Sociology and Sociologists Respond to Public Crisis

Sociologists are uniquely qualified to weigh in on the mounting public crises facing society. Sociological research can help increase public understanding of the underlying causes of social problems that move beyond explanations that assign blame to individual choices rather than institutional failings and structural inequality. This session highlights the work of sociologists who are responding to social and environmental crises and contributing to support activism, community visibility, and analysis that can help advance just solutions.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Jennifer Reich, University of Colorado-Denver; (Presider) Jennifer Reich, University of Colorado-Denver

Sociology in an Age of Extremes: Ethical Action for Disaster Risk Reduction, Lori Peek, University of Colorado-Boulder
The Politics of Guns in Divided Times, Jennifer Carlson, University of Arizona
Who Keeps Us Safe? We Keep Us Safe! Toward the Practice and Promise of Abolition Feminism, Brittany Battle, Wake Forest University
The Responsibility of Sociologists: Strategies Responding to Institutional Failures and Moral Decay, Rashawn Ray, University of Maryland-College Park
Making Communities Count: Race, the Census, and the Challenge of Advocating for Vulnerable Communities, Julie A. Dowling, University of Illinois-Chicago

Surveillance and Technology

This session examines the myriad routine manifestations of surveillance and the growing use of technologies to monitor, supervise, police, and control communities. Rather than viewing technologies that surveil as entirely successful and always equally repressive, these presentations explore the complexities of technology, including the ways they are incomplete, uneven, unjust, unsuccessful and problematic.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Jennifer Reich, University of Colorado-Denver; (Presider) Forrest Stuart, Stanford University

Surveillance Deputies, Karen Levy, Cornell University
Social Media Data in the Criminal Legal Process, Sarah Brayne, University of Texas-Austin
Doubting Dystopian Digital Destinies: Sociology and the Limits of Technological Social Control, Keith Guzik, University of Colorado-Denver
The Everyday Surveillance of Undocumented Immigrants, Asad L. Asad, Stanford University
Connecting the Pieces: China’s Bricolage Surveillance, Kevin D. Haggerty, University of Alberta

Taking Stock of MeToo to Consider its Future

MeToo is one of the most important social, cultural, and political movements of the 21^st century. While incredibly successful in bringing increased attention to sexual violence and harassment, the movement, how it has been studied, and how it has shaped popular discourse and institutional approaches to sexual violence have also been heavily critiqued. This session brings together scholars of race, gender, sexuality, and transnationality into conversation with each other to consider the future of the MeToo movement by taking into account these criticisms. Session participants will evaluate this future by discussing the shortcomings and pitfalls of the movement and the cultural symbols and rhetoric it has generated.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Rebecca Annice Hanson, University of Florida; (Presider) Rebecca Annice Hanson, University of Florida; (Panelist) Chloe Grace Hart, University of Wisconsin-Madison; (Panelist) Pharren Miller, UCLA; (Panelist) Ghassan Moussawi, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; (Panelist) Patricia Richards, University of Georgia

The 2024 Presidential Election and the Politics of Media

This panel discusses how different forms of media and different creators of media, shape or are shaped by issues central to the 2024 election; and how all of this is related to broader patterns stratification and the dissemination of meaning in society. Paper topics include: the U.S. news media’s failure to systematically identify and challenge white supremacy in political discourse; instances when engagement with identity politics in social media can create moments of “productive failure”; challenges to professional objectivity and threats to safety faced by U.S. journalists of color; how conservatives and liberals discern truth and falsehood in digital media and political speech; and discourse construction and political sensemaking in fragmented and racialized media environments. Panelists will discuss the relevance of these issues to the 2024 presidential race.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Enid Logan, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities; (Presider) Julian Culver, Brown University

Covering Whiteness – The Missing Link to White Supremacy, Jessie Daniels, CUNY-Hunter College
Resistance is [productively] futile: The promising pitfalls of social media for identity politics, Dustin Kidd, Temple University
Journalists of Color in the Current Political Climate: Safety on the Electoral Beat, Laura Garbes, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities
Media, political ideology, and telling truths from lies in the electoral context, R. Kelly Garret, Ohio State University
Reporting on the 2024 Race: A view from the DNC and RNC, Tressie Cottom, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

The 2024 Presidential Election and the Politics of Race

This panel will consider how the politics of race intersect with the politics of the 2024 presidential election. Panelists will comment upon themes such as- how opposition to anti-racist education is weaponized by GOP presidential contenders; how perceptions of white racial threat and white Christian nationalism shape affinity for republican political views; how the policing of black women’s bodies and black families figure into electoral rhetoric and policy proposals; and new and old racisms in 21^st century presidential contests.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Enid Logan, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities; (Presider) Enid Logan, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Opposition to anti-racist education in K-12 & higher ed among republican presidential candidates, Victor E. Ray, University of Iowa
Christian nationalism, perceptions of white racial threat, and affinity for the GOP, Samuel L. Perry, University of Oklahoma
Race and the 2024 Election, Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Duke University
State Policing of Black Women: Race, reproductive politics, and family, Dorothy Roberts, University of Pennsylvania

The Crises of Empire: Is America in Decline?

Hegel claimed that just because men and women learned about the past, that didn’t mean they’d make better decisions about the future. “What experience and history teach us is this—that people and governments never have learned anything from history or acted on principles deduced from it.” Following what the French called “ Les Trente Glorieuses”, the 30 years after WWII, when the US, unscathed by war damage, became the dominant superpower, its economy flourished, there was social mobility, job security and consumerism became a way of life. But the 1944 legacy of Bretton Woods ,then dominated by the US, ultimately led to crises in the Fordist/Keynesian moment, paving the way for neo liberal globalization that has had major-and adverse consequences on the US political economy and its culture. About 50 years ago Habermas wrote about legitimation crises- when the major systems of the society fail and people lose confidence in those major social institutions of the system, e.g. when the economy fails for many, the state cannot govern and/or the culture riven by intractable value differences. About that time Habermas, wrote about legitimation crises- when the major systems of the society failed e.g. when the economy fails for many-as we have seen in growing inequality, precarity, homelessness, etc, when the state cannot regulate the economy and secure loyalty the government, and as many polls show, faith in the government is very low, while the culture is riven by intractable differences in values and life styles. Racism, sexism, homophobia, and denial of science have become virulent. Some scholars have suggested that the cultural/political polarization may lead to a new civil war. Crises at the level of system, migrate to the “life worlds” of personal experience, of identity, motivation, and emotions; people may feel ignored, victimized, by elites, and feel fear, anxiety, anger; people lose confidence in those major social institutions of the system and withdraw their support and loyalty to the system and may mobilize for radical, perhaps violent change.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Lauren Langman, Loyola University-Chicago; (Presider) Lauren Langman, Loyola University-Chicago; (Panelist) Craig Calhoun, Arizona State University-Tempe; (Panelist) Charles R. Thorpe, University of California-San Diego; (Panelist) Michael J. Thompson, William Paterson University; (Panelist) Valentine M. Moghadam, Northeastern University

The Public Life of Care

This panel addresses the public life of care. We know the gendered burden of caregiving in the family imposes limits on women’s participation in the public sphere, that is, in the realm of state and markets. Sociologists have studied how unpaid care work hinders women’s civic and political engagement, while women’s association with caregiving funnels them into devalued care work occupations. But does care also contribute to public life? What are the ways in which care bolsters states, moves social movements, and democratizes the public sphere? How can sociologists map the many intersections of care and politics beyond paid/unpaid work? This panel seeks to investigate, empirically and theoretically, the relationship between care and public life.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Vrinda Marwah, University of South Florida; (Session Organizer) Alejandro Márquez, University of South Florida; (Presider) Vrinda Marwah, University of South Florida

Unpaid Work in Public Spaces: The Case of Nursing Homes, Pat Armstrong, York University
Caring Publics in Crumbling Infrastructure: An Ethnographic Perspective on India’s Public Universities, Kriti Budhiraja, University of Minnesota
Invisible Civic Engagement: The Case of Grandmothers Caring for Grandchildren, Madonna Harrington Meyer, Syracuse University
Borders and Boundaries in Care: Immigrant Rights Groups at the US-Mexico Border, Alejandro Márquez, University of South Florida
The Politics of Care, Sharmila Rudrappa, University of Texas-Austin

Time and Imprisonment: Power, Experience, and Diminished Futures

Time. It is the essential resource for everything we do. Yet it is unequally distributed across social locations, with enormous implications for quality of life. Time differentiates people and their life chances. It is the only thing we all have that, once lost, can never be regained. Through the medium of time, we establish identities, relationships, community memberships, and life trajectories. But what happens when time is subject to totalitarian control? Imprisonment represents a state-imposed rupture in time (and space) that is violent and traumatic. Time is no longer a taken-for-granted resource to use; rather, an inescapable burden to be filled or killed. Time is the silence that hovers over the incarcerated. This panel examines what time does to incarcerated people and what they do to time. Our session brings together a group of scholars who have produced influential studies of the social organization of time, variation in temporal experience, and temporal agency in the U.S. criminal justice system. We address how identities are challenged by the loss of temporal autonomy, and how incarceration undermines one’s sense of self, leaving people with limited capacity to combat the temporal regime. We explore how class, race, gender, and age differences shape incarcerated people’s experience of and resistance to time. We discuss the experience of time across various carceral spaces, from the courtroom to jails, prison, and parole. We survey strategies incarcerated people use to survive the temporal torment of imprisonment—all rooted in attempts to regain control over their time. Finally, we examine how incarceration diminishes one’s orientation toward the future.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Gabreella Friday, Brown University; (Session Organizer) John Major Eason, Brown University; (Presider) Gabreella Friday, Brown University; (Panelist) John Major Eason, Brown University; (Panelist) Michael Lawrence Walker, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities; (Panelist) Michael G. Flaherty, Eckerd College; (Panelist) Gabreella Friday, Brown University

U.S. Empire? Studies in the Decline of US Hegemony

As every imperial power pursues its expansionist agenda, the forces of resistance and opposition that it generates eventually consolidates to bring about its decline. Various paradigms exist for characterizing the rise and fall of regional and global superpowers, from classical theories of imperialist expansion to Leninist formulations and on to more recent neo-Marxist, New Imperialist Theory that focus on the multinational corporation as the central agent of expansion. Inter-imperialist rivalries remain evident in the Ukraine war and South Pacific zones of conflict. Meanwhile, industrial colonialism and capitalist extractivism in the Global South have spawned growing movements of resistance that seek to confront an unprecedented ecological devastation and super-exploitation of labor as global capital pushes up against its absolute limits. This panel includes diverse points of view that focus on the plethora of challenges confronting the United States as a declining unipolar hegemon in a shifting and increasingly volatile global context.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Ricardo A. Dello Buono, Manhattan College; (Presider) Ricardo A. Dello Buono, Manhattan College; (Panelist) Henry Veltmeyer, Saint Mary’s University/Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas; (Panelist) Michael Gonzalez-Cruz, University of Puerto Rico; (Panelist) Jose Bell Lara, University of Havana/FLACSO; (Panelist) Carlos Eduardo Da Rosa Martins, Federal University of Rio de Janeiro; (Panelist) Ligaya Lindio McGovern, Indiana University Kokomo