2023 Annual Meeting News
Spotlight on Annual Meeting Location: A Racial Reckoning at Philadelphia’s Penn Museum
Announcing the 2024 Annual Meeting Theme: “Intersectional Solidarities: Building Communities of Hope, Justice, and Joy”
Submit Howery Teaching Enhancement Grant Applications by February 1
Honors Program Applications Are Due February 17
ASA Is Hiring: Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
The Elimination of Deadlines in the NSF Sociology Program
2023 Annual Meeting News
The ASA 118th Annual Meeting is scheduled to be held August 17-21, 2023, in Philadelphia. Please note that these dates depart from the usual annual meeting pattern and the meeting runs Thursday—Monday instead of Friday—Tuesday. It focuses on President Prudence L. Carter’s theme “The Educative Power of Sociology.”
Annual Meeting Online Portal Is Open for Submissions. The 2023 Annual Meeting online portal is open for submissions. The deadline to submit is Wednesday, February 22, 2023, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern. Review the Call for Submissions page for details. In addition to paper/extended abstract submissions, we are also accepting proposals for courses, workshops, preconferences, the Sociology in Practice Settings Symposium, and the Teaching and Learning Symposium.
Volunteer to be a Discussant or Presider. ASA is accepting volunteers for Presiders, Table Presiders (roundtable sessions), and Discussants at the Annual Meeting. The volunteer deadline is February 9, 2023, at 11:59 p.m. Eastern. To volunteer, log in to the online portal with your ASA username and password and click on “Volunteer to be a Discussant or Presider” listed under the Submitter Menu. You may volunteer for up to three roles. Volunteering for a role does not guarantee you will be invited to serve. The session organizer will contact you if you are selected to serve.
Registration Is Open. Visit the Registration information page for details on rates, deadlines, and policies. All ASA Annual Meeting attendees will be required to follow any COVID-19-related protocols mandated by local authorities at the time of the meeting. ASA strongly recommends that attendees receive COVID-19 vaccination in advance of participation and use masks while we are together in Philadelphia. As you navigate the meeting space, please do your best to help protect all of our colleagues. ASA may choose to enact stricter protocols should they be warranted by public health circumstances closer to the meeting time.
ASA will offer the opportunity for remote presentation, with paid registration, for people who have a disability and people who have a medical condition for which a medical professional would advise against in-person attendance. ASA is optimistic that all remote presentation requests can be accommodated, but depending on demand and available Wi-Fi bandwidth, remote presenters should be aware that the Wi-Fi could potentially fail to support the presentation. Therefore, registrants are asked to only request remote presentation if truly necessary to increase the chances that sufficient bandwidth will be available to those who need it. A request for remote presentation must be made by August 3, 2023. To request remote presentation, email the dedicated Access for All email or call (202) 247-9848.
Spotlight on Annual Meeting Location: A Racial Reckoning at Philadelphia’s Penn Museum
By Olivia Y. Hu, PhD Student, Sociology, University of Pennsylvania
The murder of George Floyd ignited Black Lives Matter uprisings across the globe. In addition to drawing attention to racial inequality within the criminal justice system, protesters called upon all types of institutions to confront their complicity in the oppression of Black people. It was during this time that Penn Museum, one of Philadelphia’s most visited tourist attractions, found itself embroiled in two related controversies.
The first controversy involved Penn Museum’s Morton Cranial Collection, a collection of over 900 skulls assembled by a 19th century eugenicist and Penn professor named Samuel Morton. Morton possessed crania from every continent in the world, including skulls that belonged to enslaved Black Philadelphians. He not only acquired these skulls unethically, but also used them to justify enslavement. In the wake of Floyd’s murder, calls to repatriate these skulls drew renewed attention.
The second controversy involved Penn Museum’s possession of human remains from the 1985 police bombing of MOVE, a Black religious organization in Philadelphia. The remains are largely understood (login required) to be the bones of Katricia Dotson, a 14-year-old Black girl who died in the fire. Dotson’s family thought Katricia was laid to rest shortly after the tragedy; however, unbeknownst to them, Penn Museum kept Katricia’s remains for several decades. In 2020, organizers began to uncover this “open secret” and expose Penn Museum’s blatant disregard for Black people’s bodily autonomy.
In 2021, Penn Museum agreed to repatriate the Morton Collection skulls and return Katricia’s remains to her family. These actions have been well-received, but they represent only starting points in the long journey to decolonizing the museum. If museums are to remain a prominent element of public life, then we must confront the racist, White supremacist origins of anthropological exhibitions.
Morton Cranial Collection
Textbooks often represent Samuel Morton as a doctor, anatomist, and anthropologist. What many don’t know is that he was also a eugenicist and graverobber. Using his extensive, cross-national social network, he acquired crania from all corners of the world. Many of these skulls belonged to Black people who did not consent to giving their bodies to Morton after death. For example, a report showed that 14 of the skulls in Morton’s collection belonged to Black Philadelphians who were born enslaved. More disturbingly, the report revealed that these skulls were stolen from the potter’s fields of almshouses and public hospitals at Morton’s behest.
Morton measured hundreds of skulls to determine their cranial volumes, which, at the time, was considered a legitimate proxy for intelligence. Although he found a wide range of volumes within each “racial” category, he used averages to argue that the “Caucasian” race was more intelligent than the “Ethiopian” race. His work served to justify Western imperialism and the enslavement of Black people.
Since Penn Museum acquired the collection in 1966, University of Pennsylvania students and faculty have studied the crania, using them regularly in research projects and publications. After Floyd’s death, however, this all began to change. Activists argued that Penn Museum, by continuing to use these unethically sourced crania, was complicit in perpetuating racial injustice. In 2021, the museum issued an apology and began to repatriate the skulls.
MOVE Bombing
In 1972, Vincent Leaphart (later known as John Africa) founded MOVE in West Philadelphia. MOVE was an anti-establishment, anti-technology organization that practiced a “back-to-nature” philosophy. Its members, most of whom were Black, rejected western medicine and clothing, ate raw food diets, and lived communally. MOVE’s practices often drew criticism, especially from neighbors who considered them to be disruptive and unhygienic.
Residents’ discontent with MOVE reached a fever pitch in the late 1970s. By this point, the Philadelphia Police Department was already a regular fixture in MOVE’s neighborhood. After years of escalating violence between the organization and the police, the city decided to do something unprecedented: on May 13, 1985, it dropped a bomb on the MOVE residence, killing 11 members and starting a fire that destroyed 60 homes.
Two of the bodies were not immediately identified. After the city called upon forensic experts to study the remains, however, it became clear to most (login required) that the bones belonged to 14-year-old Katricia Dotson and 12-year-old Delisha Africa, two girls who lived in the MOVE house. The only specialists who were not convinced of these identifications were Penn paleoanthrolologist Alan Mann and his assistant, Janet Monge.
Because of this disagreement, assistant medical examiner Robert Segal set aside all of Katricia’s bones and some of Delisha’s bones for continued examination. The remains were moved to Penn Museum and eventually stored in a box in Monge’s office. For decades to come, Monge would, as one of Penn Museum’s associate curators, study the remains and use them as educational props (login required) without the consent of the girls’ families. The Dotsons had no idea this was happening; they believed Katricia had long been laid to rest (login required).
As Penn Museum dealt with the Morton Collection controversy, community organizers began to catch wind of this “open secret” about Katricia’s bones. They called for justice through writings and protests, eventually forcing Penn Museum to issue an apology and return Katricia’s remains to her family.
Decolonizing the Museum
The rise of museums coincided with the expansion of Western imperialism. By creating spaces to exhibit artifacts from across the globe, White curators could decontextualize the objects they stole, imbue them with ideological meaning, and use them to promote ideas about what the world is and should be. That Penn Museum found itself mired in controversy during the recent Black Lives Matter uprisings is unsurprising, given this history.
Moving forward, institutions like Penn Museum must go beyond issuing apologies and repatriating artifacts. Museums should not only collaborate with communities to improve exhibitions, but also overhaul leadership to give marginalized people meaningful, decision-making power. Only by confronting systemic racism head-on can museums prevent another Morton or MOVE tragedy. And only by respecting the dignity, bodily autonomy, and humanity of Black people can museums begin to extricate themselves from their White supremacist origins.
Any opinions expressed in the articles in this publication are those of the author and not the American Sociological Association.
Announcing the 2024 Annual Meeting Theme: “Intersectional Solidarities: Building Communities of Hope, Justice, and Joy”
Each year, ASA’s President-elect chooses a theme on which to focus some of the programming for the ASA Annual Meeting—a tradition that ensures our meetings reflect the rich diversity of perspectives and subject matter in our discipline. For the 2024 ASA Annual Meeting, President-elect Joya Misra has chosen the theme “Intersectional Solidarities: Building Communities of Hope, Justice, and Joy.” Her conception of the theme is below.
Intersectional Solidarities: Building Communities of Hope, Justice, and Joy
The 2024 theme emphasizes sociology as a form of liberatory praxis: an effort to not only understand structural inequities, but to intervene in socio-political struggles. Our field is currently undergoing a renaissance as expansions in anti-racist, decolonial, feminist, queer, and transnational theorizing lead us to more grounded, comprehensive, and inclusive insights. The 2024 program theme focuses on how we can use our understanding of intersectional inequalities and solidarities to help build a better world.
Sociologists in a wide range of settings are motivated by the potential to make a difference. This theme calls on sociologists in all of our roles—as students, teachers, advisors, mentors, leaders, applied researchers, academic researchers inside and outside of sociology departments, community-engaged researchers, and public sociologists—to consider how to use sociology to create more just communities and societies. Sociology practiced in all of these different ways makes valuable and meaningful contributions to the discipline, and the 2024 Program Committee invites and welcomes all sociologists to the table. Read more.
Submit Howery Teaching Enhancement Grant Applications by February 1
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 teaching grants can support an individual, a program, a department, or a committee of a state/regional association. ASA may award multiple grants, each up to $2,500. Funds can be used for a variety of purposes including, but not limited to: summer salary, equipment, software, travel, meetings, transcription of interviews and survey implementation. Principal criteria for the award are: the project advances the teaching and learning of sociology, serves as a seed project that will continue to have an impact over time, and will be systemic in its impact. The criteria are intentionally flexible in order to accommodate innovative proposals. Click here to find details about the application process and other guidelines.
Honors Program Applications Are Due February 17
Encourage your students to apply for the Honors Program which 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. At each year’s Annual Meeting, Honors Program students present in an Honors Program roundtable paper session and participate in Honors Program workshops on careers and graduate school. They also take part in regular sessions and special events and learn more about the ASA’s programs, initiatives, resources, special interest sections, elected leadership, and governance arms.
Participation in the Honors Program requires nomination by a faculty member from the student’s college or university. Click here for full details.
ASA Is Hiring: Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
This is an exciting opportunity to conceptualize and operationalize strategic direction for ASA’s diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts focused on both the association and the discipline. Join ASA in working toward its mission of serving sociologists in their work, advancing sociology as a discipline and profession, and promoting the contributions and use of sociology to society. For the full job advertisement, visit here.
The Elimination of Deadlines in the NSF Sociology Program
By Melanie Hughes and Joe Whitmeyer, Sociology Program Directors, National Science Foundation
The National Science Foundation Sociology Program is changing how we do things. Before getting into the details, we must begin by stressing our appreciation for the support we receive from the sociology community, which makes our work possible and rewarding. To frame the rest of what we discuss here, we note that our aim through the Sociology Program is to find and fund the best sociology and social science. We know that in order to do that, we need to work with the research community as productively as possible. In this light, in fall 2022, the Sociology Program inaugurated an important change in how it receives proposals, a change that has important consequences for the research community. Namely, the program has removed its two deadlines—technically, they were target dates in August and January—and is now accepting proposals at any time.
In this note we explain how the shift to no deadlines works, why the Sociology Program has made this change, address key questions that may arise, and offer a few tips on how to take advantage of this new situation. The new process is simple: an institution or set of collaborating institutions may submit a proposal to the Sociology Program at any time during the year. The Sociology Program convenes review panels of external reviewers to evaluate proposals once a sufficient number of proposals have been received, or perhaps enough in a few focal subfields. Three or four such panels yearly are likely. This replaces the previous practice of holding two panels per year to accommodate respectively the proposals submitted for the two target dates.
A Provision for Flexibility
Greater flexibility is the primary reason for this change. Principal investigators (PIs) for whom opportunities arise or to whom terrific ideas occur out of sync with the two target dates, or who formerly might have had to wait six months because something happened that interfered with proposal preparation, now can submit a proposal as soon as they can prepare one with which they are satisfied. This surely is better for PIs, and better for the science we fund. The more continuous flow of proposals helps the program’s flexibility as well, allowing us to hold more review panels that are smaller and more focused, which enhances the quality of the review process.
It may be helpful to know that many other programs throughout the NSF have eliminated their deadlines in recent years, without negative consequences. Many of them have collected data to evaluate the effects of the change, including possible inequities that could result, and the changes uniformly have been neutral in these regards.
Nevertheless, specific concerns may arise from the new process, some of which we can anticipate and address here. One question may be whether the duration of proposal review may be lengthened. In fact, holding more panels per year makes this unlikely, and this has not been a problem in other NSF programs that have eliminated deadlines.
A second timing question relates to the funding cycle. The Sociology Program, along with the rest of the NSF, respects the federal government’s fiscal year, which means that each year we zero out our annual budget in advance of September 30. PIs might wonder, then, if it would be necessary or at least advantageous to submit early in the fiscal year before the program budget runs low or is expended entirely. The answer is no: we manage our portfolio more competently than that! Even with two target dates per year, it was not more advantageous to be in the “Fall round” as opposed to the “Spring round.” We fund some high priority proposals we hold early in the fiscal year and hold onto others, while we wait to see what else is submitted. Toward the end of the fiscal year, should we wish to support a proposal that we no longer can afford that fiscal year, we can hold it over until the next fiscal year. Our goal always is to support the best proposals we receive, while accounting for other key considerations such as portfolio balance. We can manage the budget to achieve that, so PIs should endeavor to submit the best proposals they can, whenever they are ready.
A third question concerns the effects of this change on the co-review of proposals. The Sociology Program often co-reviews proposals with other NSF programs, primarily those in the same Division of Social and Economic Sciences, such as Law and Science (LS), Science and Technology Studies (STS), Accountable Institutions and Behavior (AIB), Security and Preparedness (SAP), and Economics. Proposals that both Sociology and other programs are interested in supporting are likely, then, to be co-funded by two or more programs. Co-reviewing and co-funding will not be affected negatively by the elimination of deadlines, although the timing of these will depend on the circumstances of the programs involved.
Work with Your Deadlines
From our observations of other programs that have eliminated deadlines, our primary tip is to replace the fixed target dates that are now gone with your own firm internal deadline. This can help you avoid putting off NSF proposal submission due to another deadline or because you think it’s not perfect. As always, prior to submitting proposals for funding, we advise that you work well in advance with your sponsored programs office, conduct pilot work to demonstrate feasibility, strategically allocate space to all needed proposal elements across the 15 pages, and write the proposal in a clear and persuasive way. It is also a good idea to familiarize yourself with characteristics of work the Sociology Program has funded in the past, for example, award periods and budgets. You can access such information at the link “Browse projects funded by this program” on the Sociology Program webpage. We are reachable at NSF ([email protected]; [email protected]) and often can respond to questions from those interested in submitting proposals. We encourage this, particularly from anyone who lacks familiarity with the Foundation and the funding process.
We look forward to receiving your proposals, whenever you are ready to send them our way.
