- Introducing Joya Misra, 2024 ASA President
- Cort, Smith-Doerr, and Tomaskovic-Devey Appointed New Editors of American Sociological Review
- Patil, Magubane, Lizardo, and Crawley Appointed New Editors of Sociological Theory
- Past President Aldon Morris Reflects on Du Bois’s Legacy in Ghana
- Submission Portal Now Open for the 2024 Annual Meeting
- Call for Volunteers: Task Force on Updating the ASA Code of Ethics
- Honors Program Applications Open December 15
- Apply for the Minority Fellowship Program by January 31
- Submit Howery Teaching Enhancement Grant Applications by February 1
- Submit Nominations for 2024 Section Awards
- Become a Leader in ASA
- Thank You to ASA’s Generous Supporters
Introducing Joya Misra, 2024 ASA President
Joya Misra, Provost Professor and Roy J. Zuckerberg Endowed Leadership Chair of Sociology and Public Policy at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, is a brilliant, fierce, caring, and feminist sociologist who is steadfast in her commitment to making the American Sociological Association a welcoming place for all. Misra’s pathbreaking corpus of sociological work spans subfields of race/gender/class, political sociology, welfare states, family, work and labor, and centers on the mechanisms that produce, exacerbate, and retrench intersectional inequalities in society. What’s more, Misra builds on this research to be a staunch advocate of engaged sociology, to inform social policy, and intervene in political struggles. Mentoring is Misra’s highest calling, and she has created communities of support for feminist scholars both within and outside of sociology. These commitments to the field and its people have not gone unnoticed. Misra is the recipient of numerous awards for her scholarship, public sociology, and mentorship, and is now the 2023-2024 President of the American Sociological Association.
Sociological Beginnings
After living in Kentucky and Ohio, Misra moved to the city of Shreveport, Louisiana, at 9, where her family was one of very few immigrant families. Her father, a medical school professor, came from a poor family in India and was, at the age of 16, serendipitously sponsored by a stranger to pursue his post-secondary education in Kolkata, India. Her mother, an immigrant from Switzerland, excelled at math and sciences, but had very limited educational opportunities as a woman, and worked as a laboratory technician. Misra was inspired by her parents’ passion for research and commitment to supporting better outcomes for children. Misra attended Rhodes College in Memphis for a year after which she moved to Centenary College of Louisiana, where she earned her B.A. majoring in religion. She attended graduate school in sociology at Emory University. There, she would go on to produce brilliant, groundbreaking feminist research on comparative political economies.
An Intellectual Tour de Force
Make no mistake, Misra is an intellectual giant. Her impressive list of publications includes four books, and more than one hundred articles, book chapters, reviews, and reports; she has also brought more than six million dollars of external funding to University of Massachusetts-Amherst (UMass-Amherst) with her collaborators.
Misra’s critical contribution to the canon of sociology began with her groundbreaking dissertation research examining the role of women’s movements, labor movements, and social Catholic movements in comparative welfare state’s provisioning for families. In the largely cismale-dominated fields of political and economic sociology, Misra unapologetically pursued feminist research on caring labor as productive, though devalued, labor, well before these issues became prominent areas of sociological inquiry.
While her early mainstream political economy work with her advisor, Alexander Hicks, appeared in the American Sociological Review (ASR) and American Journal of Sociology (AJS), she soon learned that she had to seek different venues for her feminist political economy research. (Read the ASR paper here and the AJS paper here.) One early paper in the esteemed journal Gender & Society, “Mothers or Workers?: The Value of Women’s Labor: Women and the Emergence of Family Allowance Policy,” uncovered how women-friendly state policies require an active women’s movement that promotes ideologies valuing women’s paid and unpaid labor. Her work has since expanded to advance the study of intersectional inequalities of race, ethnicity, class, gender, and citizenship in the areas of work and labor, family, migration, and comparative welfare states, publishing empirical, theoretical, and methodological articles on these topics.
Misra was among the first in the academy to integrate critical race feminist theorization within normatively white and masculine subfields of sociology, such as political and economic sociology. This began early in her career as an assistant professor of sociology at the University of Georgia (UGA), when Misra examined policy efforts to ameliorate labor market segregation and wage inequalities impacting Black women and Latinas. Her groundbreaking 2003 article published in the Annual Review of Sociology with Irene Browne, “The Intersection of Gender and Race in the Labor Market,” built on the brilliant work of Deborah Karyn King, while also paving the way for an explosion of intersectional sociological labor scholarship for decades to come.
Misra’s scholarly impact is global. We see this in her work on the globalization of care work and reproductive labor migration; the cross-national variation in gendered employment, wages, and poverty, including the motherhood penalty; and the comparative gendered, classed, and racialized outcomes of the neoliberalization of welfare state policies. She has presented her research across the globe, and has been an active participant in the RC19 Poverty, Social Welfare and Social Policy Research Committee of the International Sociological Association for decades.
In 2022, Misra published Walking Mannequins: How Race and Gender Inequalities Shape Retail Clothing Work (University of California Press) with her collaborator Kyla Walters. This work offers unprecedented insights into the entrenchment of racial, sexual, classed, and gendered dynamics of service workplace inequality. Walking Mannequins also bears the mark of Misra’s intellectual project as it offers generative and practical solutions for real, positive change.
To wit, Misra has also produced immensely important research on inequalities in academia. Misra covers a diverse range of issues in this critical work, including representation and inclusion, workload disparities, neoliberal logics in faculty evaluations, and intersectional pandemic impacts on faculty. Laurel Westbrook, professor, Sociology Department, Grand Valley State University, reflects, “Sociology as a discipline is profoundly better because of the work Joya has done and continues to do.”
Leading Fiercely, with an Intersectional Ethic of Care
Do not let Misra’s kind, soft-spoken, and down-to-earth demeanor fool you. As a leader, Misra is a true force to be reckoned with. Unafraid to speak truth to power within the often-stodgy halls of the ivory tower, Misra is well-known for her generosity, allyship, and commitment to social justice. She “actively works to lift up voices not commonly centered in sociology,” says Westbrook. In a profession where a neoliberal culture of competition can easily thrive, Misra’s commitment to social justice is paired with an unwavering ethic of care. Veronica Montes, associate professor of sociology and co-director of Latin American, Iberian, and Latina/o Studies at Bryn Mawr College, remarks, “Joya combines intellectual rigor with respect, solidarity, patience, and care… Her generosity, collegiality, and respectful and attentive listening define Joya as an extraordinary colleague.” Poulami Roychowdhury, associate professor of international and public affairs at Brown University’s Watson Institute, reflects, “Joya embodies unflagging kindness and intellectual generosity.”
Misra’s leadership roles at UMass-Amherst are exhaustive and too many to detail in one short biography. At the university she has been vice president of the faculty union, directed the Institute for Social Science Research, as well as helped lead UMass ADVANCE, a program funded by the National Science Foundation, to advance women and faculty of color in science and engineering.
She has held several positions at ASA. Misra previously served as Vice President (2018-2021), served on Council (2010-2013), chaired the Sex & Gender (2021-2022) and Race, Gender & Class sections (2010-2011), and served on Section council for Political Sociology (2003-2006) and Political Economy of the World System (1998-2001). Outside ASA, she was also the editor of Gender & Society from 2011 to 2015.
Misra leads with intention in all her roles, a trait that has garnered admiration and trust by so many around her. Kimberly Kay Hoang, professor of sociology and director of Global Studies, University of Chicago, reflects, “Joya leads with a deep sense of purpose, community, and a commitment to projects of social justice much bigger than herself.” Of her tenure as editor of Gender & Society, Wendy Simonds, professor, Department of Sociology, Georgia State University, notes, “She has shaped feminist scholarship and scholars in profound ways.” Indeed, Joya’s work to increase Gender & Society’s publication of feminist scholarship advancing anti-racist, decolonial, queer, and transnational theorizing was and remains enormously transformative to the field.
An Engaged Public Intellectual
In a world where public sociology is increasingly needed, Misra stands as an exemplary model of how to do public scholarship and help transform the world into a more equitable one. But don’t just take our word for it. Simonds notes, “Everything Joya does is motivated by her commitment to social justice.” LaTonya Trotter, associate professor, Department of Bioethics and Humanities, UW Medicine, shares “When most people speak about being a ‘public scholar,’ they mean translating their work from the academy to the larger public. But Joya has put her scholarship to work in the public realm, through thinking about, for example, how what we know about gender and racial inequality in the workplace can be used to improve those workplaces.”
Misra’s collaborative work on academic inequalities has appeared in more than thirty columns in Inside Higher Ed, providing clear approaches to how to make universities more inclusive and equitable, including those related to inequalities exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. With her then-UMass-Amherst collaborators Dessie Clark and Ethel Mickey, Misra developed the TREE model to help institutions support faculty, including women faculty and faculty of color, given the uneven impact of the pandemic on faculty.
Misra regularly contributes to outlets like The Conversation, is quoted in respected news sources such as the New York Times, and is interviewed by radio and television outlets. Her commitment to bringing sociological scholarship to the public also extended to her time as editor of Gender & Society, where she and her managing editors, including Mahala Dyer Stewart, initiated the Gender & Society blog. Stewart, assistant professor of sociology, Hamilton College, notes, “The blog was her vision for making the journal more widely accessible not only in the U.S., but in other parts of the world for those who may not have access to the journal.” These are just a few examples of Misra’s public engagement. In 2022, the Eastern Sociological Society awarded Misra its Public Sociology Award.
A Celebrated, Caring Mentor
Although we could speak to Misra’s mentoring from a personal basis and our own observations, we have heard time and time again from colleagues both inside and outside her institution about the depth of Misra’s mentoring. Enobong (Anna) Branch, senior vice president for equity, Rutgers University, noted that earlier in her career, Misra provided extensive and thoughtful mentoring, sharing that “…her availability and attention are unparalleled.”
Undoubtedly, Misra has been a consistent guide to early-career scholars, including her many students at UMass-Amherst and UGA. She has served on more than 50 doctoral committees, chaired another 19, and served on 55 masters/comprehensive exam committees, and chaired another 40. And of course, this doesn’t include her mentorship to faculty members across the university, and students and faculty in the larger world. Many were guided by Misra’s thoughtful hand, even while she had a substantial doctoral mentoring load at UMass-Amherst. For instance, Trotter shares, “Joya and I have never shared the same institution, but she has been one of the most phenomenal mentors to me, personally. Considering that she has mentored so many of her own PhD students speaks volumes to her commitment and generosity in mentoring early career scholars.”
Misra’s mentoring labor has created a feminist ripple effect, modeling feminist mentorship to early-career scholars who then use Misra’s advice to guide their own students. Certainly, we have followed this tradition—thinking about advising doctoral students, we sometimes hear in the back of our minds—what would Joya do? This is a loyal voice guiding us with the goal of care and holistic mentoring. Similarly, Nikki Khanna, professor of sociology, University of Vermont, reflects, “She modeled what it meant to be a good mentor, and I always think of her amazing example when I work with my own students.” Echoing this sentiment, Hoang wrote, “Joya is an incredible feminist mentor who has mentored so many people with respect to their scholarship and advancement in the profession. She is thoughtful, generous, and a model for so many of us.” It is no surprise, then, that Misra has been recognized for her mentorship, including the Feminist Mentoring Award given by Sociologists for Women in Society.
Importantly, Misra mentors with an ethic of care and a commitment to the whole person. “Joya is a holistic mentor,” reflects Sonny Nordmarken, assistant professor of sociology, Georgia State University. “She has always taken me, my work, and my well-being seriously. I hope I may act with such generosity myself, as a mentor.” Misra’s caring for her colleagues through her holistic mentorship is indeed a reflection of her feminist sociological praxis in action.
2024 Meeting Theme: Intersectional Solidarities: Building Communities of Hope, Justice, and Joy
All of these efforts remind us how Misra’s ethic of care extends beyond the academy. Truly, the ASA 2024 Annual Meeting theme titled “Intersectional Solidarities: Building Communities of Hope, Justice, and Joy” is an invitation for transformative change. With Misra’s leadership, we look at and beyond our discipline to strive for intersectional justice. Misra’s theme should inspire conversations of hope that cross disciplinary and institutional boundaries. It is a call to re-imagine a more caring, healing, and joyful future and present.
By Celeste Curington, Boston University and Cassaundra Rodriguez, University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Cort, Smith-Doerr, and Tomaskovic-Devey Appointed New Editors of American Sociological Review
Photo credit: University of Massachusetts-Amherst
I am honored to introduce David Cort, Laurel Smith-Doerr, and Donald Tomaskovic-Devey—all professors of sociology at the University of Massachusetts-Amherst—as the new editors of the American Sociological Review. This is a distinguished team of sociologists whose scholarship has earned multiple article and book awards and a combined total of over 30,000 citations on Google Scholar.
The team has an inclusive vision of the journal that holds tight to the rigor and sophistication that make it a top ranked sociology journal globally, while articulating clear steps for ensuring intellectual breadth and global engagement. Their vision emphasizes community building, mentoring, global scope, and accessible training to incorporate a wider range of scholarly voices. More than a vision for the journal, the team holds a vision of sociology that is the best version of the discipline—rigorous, reflexive, inclusive, and broadly relevant.
In their scholarship, these three sociologists tend toward structural understandings of processes and mechanisms that create, replicate, and sustain inequalities. As evidence of their ability to reflect on their own tendencies to think in particular ways and recognition that a journal serving the entire discipline requires breadth, the incoming ASR editors will focus on the specific steps they plan to take to build an editorial board with strengths and tendencies that complement and expand, rather than reproduce, their own. David, Laurel, and Donald bring wide ranging methodological skills and expertise—they use both qualitative and quantitative methods. If a question demands methodological skills they do not have, I have seen each of them learn new tools, collaborate with scholars who have the needed skills, or support extensive training for graduate student collaborators.
David Cort
David Cort earned his BS in psychology at Oakwood University, a small HBCU in Huntsville, Alabama, before completing his MA in sociology from George Washington University, and PhD in sociology from the University of California-Los Angeles. David’s research focuses on stratification, demography, health, and migration. When asked to reflect on accomplishments of which he is particularly proud, David begins by speaking of his academic career at Oakwood University. He said “[G]ood scholars can come from anywhere. I am proud of the opportunity to show that thriving under the radar and rising from lesser resourced environments are not things to be ashamed of; they are badges of honor.”
For David to reference himself as a “good scholar” as he steps into the role of ASR editor captures who he is precisely. He is constantly working on honing his skills and refining his sociological practice to improve himself as a scholar while recognizing and supporting those around him. When I was a first-year graduate student, David, a new assistant professor at the time, off-handedly described me as “technically inclined,” which turned out to be the encouragement I needed to believe myself capable of learning quantitative methods. David has taken this orientation toward mentoring far beyond his home institution and is particularly proud to collaborate with and mentor graduate students from impoverished backgrounds in southern Africa. He also steps up when needed, having previously served as associate dean for diversity and inclusion at the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, UMass-Amherst.
As ASR editor, he is looking forward to enhancing the global scope of the journal by continuing to build relationships like those he started on a Fulbright Fellowship to build scholarly capacity at Walter Sisulu University, Eastern Cape, South Africa.
Laurel Smith-Doerr
Laurel Smith-Doerr is best known for her award-winning work on gender and science and on the implications of organizational structure for inequality. Long before I met Laurel, her book Women’s Work: Gender Equality vs. Hierarchy in the Life Sciences (Lynne Rienner Publishers 2004) was pivotal for me in identifying how to ask research questions. While working on my dissertation prospectus, I found myself returning repeatedly to the beautifully written methodological appendix for guidance.
Laurel earned her BA degree in sociology from Pomona College and her MA and PhD in sociology from the University of Arizona. Prior to joining UMass-Amherst, she was associate professor of sociology at Boston University. Laurel has played central roles in shaping social science research as the director of the UMass Institute for Social Science Research, and as the principal investigator on a National Science Foundation ADVANCE-Institutional Transformation grant focusing on disrupting systems that produce intersectional inequalities among faculty. Her work on science policy with the National Science Foundation and the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine has pushed scientific inquiry toward practices that enhance innovation and rigor by productively incorporating more voices through collaboration and inclusion.
Despite these distinctions, Laurel’s dearest accomplishment is earning a PhD as the first woman in her family to complete college. Laurel enjoys studying collaboration collaboratively, working with and learning from others, starting with her former adviser, Woody Powell, and including many students and colleagues. She is also proud of participating in the creation of the Ida B. Wells-Troy Duster Award as chair of the ASA’s Science, Knowledge, and Technology Section.
Donald Tomaskovic-Devey
For much of his career, Don has been pushing scholars of inequality to locate inequalities relationally in jobs and workplaces. While he is not alone in this work, he has been important in shifting the study of inequality away from focusing on measuring things like human capital differences between groups or pay differentials across occupations. Instead, Don urges us to consider how relations between workers become embedded in the structures of workplaces and organizations in, for example, differences in access to resources like pay or autonomy.
Don came to UMass-Amherst from North Carolina State University, and he earned his BA in sociology from Fordham University and PhD in sociology from Boston University. When I asked Don about the accomplishments of which he is most proud, he described the careers of the many PhD students he has mentored, befriended, and crafted sociology with.
In my mind, Don has at least three qualities that make him an excellent mentor, scholar, and exciting ASR editor. He is genuinely excited to find new, different, and creative ways to think about the social world. He engages extensively with international scholars and scholarship, and he has an awe-inspiring understanding of the conditions that led to and support current conventions in sociology and beyond.
In addition to his tenure as chair at UMass-Amherst, and as executive director of the UMass Center for Employment Equity, Don has served as secretary of ASA, chair of three ASA sections, and as president of the Southern Sociological Society.
Looking Ahead
I had the opportunity to ask the new editors about the challenges American sociology needs to address in the next few years. They all indicated the potential of sociology to point to pathways toward solutions to global challenges: the climate crisis, the global rise of authoritarianism, global health crises, and AI/automation. Laurel “would like to see our discipline bring hope and grounded optimism to inform collective action in face of oppression.” Don said that sociology can contribute by identifying how to “mobilize powerful organizations across regions, income levels, and sectors to join a collaborative problem-solving effort before it is too late.” David said that “our discipline has much to offer concerning the causes and consequences of these trends” and that American sociologists ought not to be afraid of sounding clarion calls about the dangers of the rise of authoritarianism in particular.
When I asked about the sociological work that inspires them, Don identified Marx, Weber, and noted the lessons Du Bois’s scholarship provides for us today. He said, “What strikes me is how modern Du Bois was, long before the rest of sociology. Marx and Weber were trying to explain the transition from the past to the present, Du Bois had his finger on processes and mechanisms in his present, which remain powerful in ours.” For example, at its core Du Bois’ The Philadelphia Negro is fundamentally about understanding how racism and racialization form linkages at the micro, meso and macro levels, a sensibility that Sociology is only recently arriving at.
David is currently drawing inspiration from sociological work that makes theoretical contributions to global health. He particularly values this area of sociology for its interdisciplinarity and said that contributing “to this field has the potential to showcase the very best of what our discipline has to offer, while providing insights concerning some of the most pressing issues across the planet.”
Laurel seconded Don’s insights about Du Bois’s modernism. Thanks to scholars of Du Bois like Aldon Morris and our own UMass colleague in Anthropology, Whitney Battle-Baptiste, we’re more aware of how Du Bois was ahead of his time in many ways, including the use of visual data representations and public sociology to convey insights on racialized organization.
Sociologically, Laurel is inspired by work that “intellectually piques my curiosity, calls me to action, answers a question about how to use a method, and even sometimes serves as a model for how ‘not’ to write (if you’re unsure about that neologism, don’t do it).” But she also draws inspiration from science fiction including work by Octavia Butler, Connie Willis, Colson Whitehead, and even Du Bois’s short sci-fi stories (e.g. The Comet), introduced to her by Alondra Nelson’s work on Afrofuturism.
The three scholars will bring their version of collaborative, globally engaged, inclusive sociology to bear on the American Sociological Review in their tenure as editors. In the midst of a global turn toward authoritarianism, increasingly widespread use of AI tools, and health as well as climate crises poised to reshape how we organize our lives and envision our futures, this kind of thoughtful and reflexive scholarship positions sociology particularly well to make forward-looking contributions in a shifting social landscape.
By Sharla Alegria, University of Toronto
Patil, Magubane, Lizardo, and Crawley Appointed New Editors of Sociological Theory
I am delighted to introduce the new editorial team of Sociological Theory, who will be taking over full responsibilities for the journal in January 2024. The team consists of Vrushali Patil (University of Maryland-Baltimore County), Zine Magubane (Boston College), Omar Lizardo (University of California-Los Angeles), and S. L. Crawley (University of South Florida), and promises an exciting new chapter for the journal, and for the discipline.
Accomplished Scholars
The editors are each accomplished and prolific theorists. Patil has written exciting work on intersectionality, postcolonial theory and empire. Her book, Webbed Connectivities (University of Minnesota Press 2022) argues for the importance of transnational and trans-border questions in order to re-think not only processes occurring in the Global South, but also turning the gaze back on the way such processes shape cultural and institutional processes in the Global North, exploring “the deep histories of entanglements within which northern and southern theories both emerge.” Patil was chair of ASA’s Sociology of Sexualities Section from 2020-2021. In 2019, she received the Distinguished Article Award from the Section.
Magubane’s work lies at the intersection of the sociology of race, gender, and post-colonial studies. She has produced important work on South Africa and the sociology of race, as well as being at the forefront of our discipline’s ongoing reclamation of W. E. B. Du Bois as a central theoretical figure. She is the author of Bringing the Empire Home (The University of Chicago Press 2003), comparing colonial conceptions of blackness in South Africa and England, and the way the imprint of such conceptions still echoes today, as well editing books on women in South African academia and on postcolonial theory. Before joining Boston College, Magubane began her career as a lecturer at the University of Cape Town, and as a researcher at the South African Human Sciences Research Council in Pretoria. She was chair of ASA’s Global and Transnational Sociology Section from 2020-2021.
Lizardo has made numerous contributions to cultural sociology, cognitive sociology, institutional sociology, and classical theoretical debates. Among other awards, Lizardo received in 2013 the ASA Theory Section’s Lewis A Coser Award for Theoretical Agenda-Setting, and the Section on the Sociology of Culture’s Clifford Geertz Award for Best Article in 2008. Lizardo is the co-author of Measuring Culture (Columbia University Press 2020), and comes into the journal with a rich editorial experience, having co-edited the American Sociological Review with Rory McVeigh and Sarah Mustillo from 2016-2020.
Crawley is a sociologist of gender, sexuality and queer studies, who has made important interventions in gender scholarship by returning to the work of Dorothy Smith and ethnomethodological theory as ways to show how gender is collectively held, made and re-made. Drawing from different strands—from pragmatism to new materialisms—Crawley comes into the journal after having served as chair of ASA’s Sociology of Gender Section, and as the president elect of the Sociologists for Women in Society.
Complementary Expertise
A short introductory essay such as this one cannot do justice to their work, but suffice it to say that, on their individual merits, the incoming editors are more than up to the task of leading the journal, and sociological theory more generally, in exciting directions. Yet, the incoming editors also complement each other’s substantive areas of expertise. Where Crawley is a scholar of sex and gender, Lizardo is primarily a sociologist of culture, and Magubane and Patil, in different ways, are post-colonial scholars of empire, race and gender. In other words, the editors bring a variety of sub-disciplinary strengths—some currently woefully neglected in theory journals—to their editorial work.
Moreover, beyond the talent and vision that each of the new editors promises to infuse in the journal, two reasons make this team particularly exciting. First, as any editor knows all too well, journals end up having to rely on the editors’ networks. While we often try to break through our networks by asking reviewers to suggest other names, or by inviting reviewers after scouring the “best articles” awards of ASA sections (or even with the help of Google Scholar), reviewing is inherently “network-biased.” This is especially the case for papers that, for some reason or another, we can’t find reviewers for. The very fact we can’t find reviewers for such papers is often a result of our network-bias, but we also solve it by leaning even harder on our networks, sending a personal email to a colleague, and asking if they might be able to look at the beleaguered manuscript.
The institutional make-up of the new editorial team is, in this regard, important. They are not only located in different subdisciplines, but come from and are located in different institutions, thus potentially opening up the journal to new reviewers. Consequently, one hopes that as new voices are brought on board as reviewers, these reviewers will come to see themselves as authors who could, and should, be published in the journal.
It is in this second regard, I think, that the new editorial team is particularly exciting. Sociological theory (both the journal and the substantive interest) often seems to be engaged with a limited range of questions that counts as “theory.” This is reflected both in the make-up of the people who see themselves as theorists and in the kind of topics that are covered by “theory.” Economic sociologists, sociologists of culture, and sociologists of science and technology—at least in my limited experience as editor—are far more likely to consider their work as theory work and to send their manuscripts to the journal than do scholars of race or gender, who are more likely to send their work elsewhere. There are, of course, historical reasons for such subfield differences. People who considered themselves “general theorists” were more likely to be interested in some things than in others, and to blithely assume that given their own interest, the substantive topics they were engaged in were more general—and more theoretically important—than others.
Yet, of course, there are precious few (good) reasons behind such perceptions. Some of the most exciting theoretical work being done in sociology today is done precisely in these subfields. Having an editorial team in which three of four members focus on questions of race, gender, and empire promises to send a strong signal that such questions are no less “theoretical” than the traditional theory-adjacent subfields. In an ideal world, at least in my own understanding of theory, the subfield is equally close to any particular subfield, as theory allows us to speak among subfields. The new team hopes, by accident of their own subfield foci, but also by design, to encourage the scholars from new subfields to understand themselves as theorists, and to send their work to the journal.
Both on their own individual merits, then, and as they open up the discipline to new directions, the new editorial team promises to usher in an exciting era for the journal.
By Iddo Tavory, Professor of Sociology, New York University, and Editor, Sociological Theory
Past President Aldon Morris Reflects on Du Bois’s Legacy in Ghana
2021 ASA President Aldon Morris, author of The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Birth of Modern Sociology and Leon Forrest Emeritus Professor of Sociology and Blacks Studies at Northwestern University, recently met Ghanian President Nana Akufo-Addo to honor the legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois as the founder of global emancipatory sociology and an activist for achieving human liberation. The W. E. B. Du Bois Museum Foundation invited Morris to present his book to Akufo-Addo as part of its efforts to convince the government to enhance and preserve Du Bois’s home in Accra, Ghana. Morris was a member of a delegation that presented arguments to the President why Ghana had to lead the way to preserve Du Bois’s legacy. At a meeting with the Du Bois Foundation in New York on September 22, 2023, Akufo-Addo agreed to transfer the property to the Foundation.
Morris reflects on his experience in this blog, which has been published by the University of California Press. Morris also discussed his experience in this interview published in Contexts.
Submission Portal Now Open for the 2024 Annual Meeting
The 2024 Annual Meeting, with President Joya Misra’s theme, “Intersectional Solidarities: Building Communities of Hope, Justice, and Joy,” will be held in Montréal from August 9-13, 2024. Please review the Call for Submissions to learn more about the types of proposals being accepted. The online portal is open for submissions now and the deadline is February 26, 2024, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern. Registration information has been posted and registration will open in January.
Call for Volunteers: Task Force on Updating the ASA Code of Ethics
Since the most recent update of the ASA Code of Ethics, the landscape for ethical issues related to the practice of sociology has evolved in significant ways. In light of this, ASA Council has decided to appoint a task force to update the Code. This update will be designed to include emerging issues, such as artificial intelligence, and to be more specific about other issues, such as data sharing. The focus of the update will be on strengthening an educational document that sociologists can use to guide their own behavior and to reference in relation to institutional activity. If you are interested in applying to serve, please send an email to ASA executive director Nancy Kidd ([email protected]) no later than December 1 with your name, professional affiliation, contact information, and a statement of no more than 250 words documenting why you are interested in this work and your relevant experience.
Honors Program Applications Open December 15
The Honors Program provides exceptional undergraduate sociology students with a rich introduction to the professional life of the discipline through participation in special activities at the ASA Annual Meeting, including roundtable sessions and workshops. Learn more about the program here. Applications will open on December 15.
Apply for the Minority Fellowship Program by January 31
The Minority Fellowship Program is accepting applications for Cohort 51 (2024-2025). This program supports the development and training of sociologists of color in any sub-area or specialty in the discipline. Applications are due January 31, 2024. Click here to learn more.
Submit Howery Teaching Enhancement Grant Applications by February 1
Did you know that the Carla B. Howery Teaching Enhancement Fund provides small grants to support projects that advance the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning within the discipline of sociology? Howery grants can support an individual, a program, a department, or a committee of a state/regional association. The deadline for submissions is February 1. Save the date—January 11—for an “Ask Me Anything” session where you can anonymously ask reviewers questions to strengthen your application.
Submit Nominations for 2024 Section Awards
Each year, ASA Sections celebrate the achievements of sociologists in their areas of academic interest. Awards are given for books, dissertations, articles, and student and career achievements. Consider nominating your colleagues and students. For more information about individual Section awards and deadlines, click here.
Become a Leader in ASA
We are an association of, by, and for our members, and we can’t do what we do without the hundreds of sociologists like you who support our activities in a variety of ways. Becoming a leader within ASA is a meaningful way to expand your professional networks while contributing to the health of your profession and professional organization. If you would like to learn more about leadership opportunities at ASA, please click here.
Thank You to ASA’s Generous Supporters
ASA acknowledges the generous support of the following individuals, whose financial contributions (January 1, 2023, through June 30, 2023) to the association have strengthened our discipline.
Some of these donations provide unrestricted support to ASA, and others are used specifically for the American Sociological Fund, the Carla B. Howery Teaching Enhancement Fund, or the Community Action Research Initiative.
For the list of supporters who donated to the “Making a Difference Today for Tomorrow” Campaign for the MFP, please click here.
If you are interested in making a contribution to support ASA in its mission to serve sociologists in their work, advance sociology as a science and profession, and promote the contributions and use of sociology to society, please click here.
| Malissa Alinor | Michael Dreiling | Cheryl Knott | J. Timmons Roberts |
| David J. Armor | Angela Durante | Lester R. Kurtz | Eric Eben Sevareid |
| Carl B. Backman | Bob Edwards | Emilio Liberati | Tracy J. Sims |
| Ryan Calder | Crystal Marie Fleming | Bruce G. Link | E L Smallwood |
| Sung David Chun | Paula Fomby | Stacey Bryley Livingstone | Margaret R. Somers |
| Matthew Clair | William H. Frey | Nicholas Joseph Occhiuto | Ronald A. Stevens |
| Andy Clarno |
Fatma Muge Gocek
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Robert Nash Parker | Elizabeth M. Sweeney |
| Lucius Couloute | Paul J. Hirschfield | Birgit Pfau-Effinger | Amanda Udis-Kessler |
| Clayton Nathan Dale | Steve G. Hoffman | Michelle J. Poulin | Manuel Vallee |
| Arnold Dashefsky | Tiffany D. Joseph | Ellen R. Reese | Byrad Yyelland |
| Ruchira S. Datta | Barbara R. Keating | Daisy Isabel Verduzco Reyes | Min Zhou |
| Jamie M. Dolan | Shelley McDonough Kimelberg | Megan M. Reynolds |
