Thematic Sessions | American Sociological Association

The Annual Meeting Program Committee is pleased to announce the Thematic Session line up for the 2024 Annual Meeting. Thematic Sessions explore the meeting theme, are broad in scope, and endeavor to make the theme of the meeting come alive.

Academic Leadership through an Intersectional Feminist Framework

Academic leadership in colleges and universities is slowly becoming more diverse as the composition of the faculty slowly shifts. How do faculty members who use an intersectional feminist lens in their research use that framework in their academic leadership work as Directors, Deans, Provosts and DEI leaders? How can we reimagine the university using intersectional feminism as the guiding model for the work that we do and the way that we do it? Compositional diversity in the administration is not enough to change the structure of inequality in universities. This panel features academic leaders across a variety of institutions who are all deeply engaged in feminist racial justice work with attention to disability justice, LGBTQ+ freedom and more, who will share their strategies, visions, successes and challenges as leaders in the work.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Margaret Hunter, Santa Clara University; (Presider) Margaret Hunter, Santa Clara University; (Panelist) Enobong (Anna) Branch, Rutgers University-New Brunswick; (Panelist) Elisa Diana Huerta, Associate Vice Chancellor for Equity & Inclusion, UC Berkeley; (Panelist) Miranda Haskie, Diné College; Carolette Norwood, Howard University

Afrofuturism: Daring to Imagine a New World

This session brings together scholars whose work celebrate alternative futures across Africa and the African Diaspora. Ytasha Womack’s book Afrofuturism: The World of Black Sci-Fi and Fantasy Culture reminds us that if we want a better world, we must be able to imagine it. Because if we can’t imagine it, we cannot take the agency needed to make changes. The world is so much larger and has more possibilities than science can describe. Through Afrofuturism, anything is possible from creating new life to social freedoms. In this session, scholars focus on the ways our imagination can not only give us hope for a better future but also feed creative intelligence and problem solving.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Myron T. Strong, Community College of Baltimore County; (Session Organizer) Walter Greason, Macalester College; (Presider) Nelda Nix McCray, The Community College of Baltimore County; (Panelist) Myron T. Strong, Community College of Baltimore County; (Panelist) Giselle Greenidge, Northwest Missouri State University; (Panelist) Renée T. White, The New School; (Panelist) Walter Greason, Macalester College

Black Joy and Anti-Blackness

In this roundtable session, panelists discuss their work and writing about anti-Blackness and how Black folks cultivate Black joy. Still, we seek to trouble and unpack the current “joy turn.” While centering Black joy and pleasure is necessary, this session aims to tackle how we do it in ways that do not erase systems of power and their real harms. Sociologists can indeed center Black joy but not lose sight of how white supremacy, racial capitalism, ableism, heteropatriarchy, and all its intersections shape access to and experiences of Black joy.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Michelle Randall, American Sociological Association; (Session Organizer) Angela Jones, SUNY-Farmingdale; (Presider) Simone Nicole Durham, University of Maryland, College Park; (Panelist) Antar Akari Tichavakunda, University of California-Santa Barbara; (Panelist) Endia L Hayes, Rutgers University; (Panelist) Shaneda L Destine, University of Tennessee-Knoxville; (Panelist) Crystal Marie Fleming, Stony Brook University; (Panelist) Blu Buchanan, University of North Carolina Asheville

Bringing Joy to Immigration Studies

Where is joy in migration studies? The social problem of growing inequality is a central cause and consequence of global migration and thus features prominently in international migration scholarship. However, hope, justice, and joy are crucial aspects of immigrant experiences. This thematic session aims to reduce the “joy deficit” (shuster and Westbrook 2022) in migration scholarship by inviting papers that explore how immigrants make choices for themselves and their families for reasons other than through the hyper-rational lens of upward mobility. In addition, the session aims to provide a more nuanced portrait of immigrant life by uniting the complexity of migrants’ feelings of hope in spite of despair, their triumphs of justice in the face of injustice, and their sense of joy accompanied by sorrow.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Brenda Gambol, University of Texas at Dallas; (Session Organizer) Rebecca Karam, Michigan State University; (Presider) Brenda Gambol, University of Texas at Dallas; (Panelist) Rebecca Karam, Michigan State University; (Panelist) Leisy Abrego, University of California, Los Angeles; (Panelist) Jia-Lin Liu, University of California, Los Angeles; (Panelist) Daniela Pila, University at Albany; (Discussant) Nazli Kibria, Boston University

Building Community among Sociologists under Fire

In this session, sociologists who have recently published on the challenges of academic freedom for sociologists will discuss how academic freedom is shaping our every day experiences in the classroom, in our workplaces, and through our research, publishing, and advocacy work. Political polarization is endangering the essential nature of “doing sociology,” as decades of sociological evidence and knowledge are treated as “alternative facts,” and in some case legislated out of classrooms and university webpages. How can we come together and form communities of sociologists to support one another under these conditions, particularly when we fear for our own livelihoods? How do we promote hope, justice and joy among sociologists in these difficult times?

Participants: (Session Organizer) Joya Misra, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; (Presider) Cedric de Leon, University of Massachusetts, Amherst; (Panelist) Bhoomi Thakore, University of Connecticut; (Panelist) Barbara Combs, Kennesaw State University; (Panelist) Yiorgo Topalidis, State College of Florida-Manatee-Sarasota

Building Communities for First Generation Sociologists

The 2022 report from the ASA Task Force on First-Generation and Working-Class People in the Discipline and the 2023 special issue of Teaching Sociology “A Class of Our Own” both illustrated how people from first-generation and working-class (FGWC) backgrounds who study and work in sociology enliven our campuses and enrich our discipline. Students and faculty from FGWC backgrounds have a long and diverse record of building communities of support which work to reduce and overcome the structural barriers which unfortunately continue to impede their access and opportunity. In this panel discussion, members of the ASA Task Force, contributors to the Teaching Sociology special issue, and others studying FGWC experiences in a variety of contexts, will lead a robust discussion of a wide range of activities building communities both by and for FGWC sociologists. So much of what matters about the FGWC experience in sociology is about context, and each panelist will relate stories and strategies about building communities as part of creating for themselves and fellow sociologists a more supportive context. From organizing SNAP application workshops, to studying how institutional context interacts with class culture, to reflecting on building community among collaborators, and experiencing social mobility, our colleagues here represent a diverse set of institutions and career statuses, and will share insights from their research, classrooms, collaborations, and careers.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Colby R. King, University of South Carolina-Upstate; (Presider) Colby R. King, University of South Carolina-Upstate; (Panelist) Amanda Mireles, University of California, Merced; (Panelist) Wolfgang Lehmann, Western University; (Panelist) Heather-Ann Layth, Mississippi State University; (Panelist) Mary Larue Scherer, Sam Houston State University

Building Communities of Healing: Theorizing Disability, Chronic Illness, and Mental Health

This session explores the myriad ways people with disabilities and chronic illness encounter and challenge ableism, exercise agency, and build community. Papers in this session explore dynamics related to disclosure, stigma, self-determination in the face of disaster, and how systems of care matter. Together, this session challenges assumptions about people and communities with disability and identifies ways to work toward better understanding, equity, justice.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Jennifer Reich, University of Colorado-Denver; (Presider) Linda M. Blum, Northeastern University; (Discussant) Linda M. Blum, Northeastern University

Beyond Being Rescued: Recognizing Disabled People as Networked Actors in Disasters, Angela Frederick, University of Texas-El Paso
Recognizing and Unlearning Ableism: A Study of Individuals with Acquired Physical Disabilities in Haiti, Kapriskie Seide, Davidson College
Bringing Our Whole Selves to Work: Reflections on Chronic Illness Disclosure with Research, Scholarly, and Learning Communities, Stacy Torres, University of California0San Francisco
Care is the Conduit: Outlining systemic ableism and our anti-body politic, Laura Mauldin, University of Connecticut

Building Community through Engaged and Applied Research

Sociological research has the potential to build community, and develop the capacity for communities to identify, address, and find solutions for the pressing social problems that they face. In this Thematic Panel, scholars will discuss their engaged and applied research, carried out in through engagement with and at times in partnership with the communities that they work with, showing how this work makes a difference not only through contributions to scholarship, but also through building hope, justice, joy, and agency, in the communities they collaborate with.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Mary Bernstein, University of Connecticut; (Session Organizer) Joya Misra, University of Massachusetts-Amherst; (Presider) Marina Karides, University of Hawaii-Manoa; (Panelist) Mindy L. Fried, Arbor Consulting Partners; (Panelist) Zakiya Luna, Washington University-St. Louis; (Panelist) Veronica Montes, Bryn Mawr College; (Panelist) Felicia Arriaga, Appalachian State University

Community Colleges as Sites of Intersectional Solidarities: Building Communities of Hope, Justice and Joy

The goal of this session is to develop a framework for understanding intersectional solidarities found within community colleges. Bringing together divergent demographic groups and serving a population of greater social need than other sectors of higher education, community colleges serve as laboratories for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) practices. Although there is a growing body of research on various aspects of community colleges, there is virtually no analysis of their potential as sites of intersectional solidarity and social justice. A primary finding of the American Sociological Association Task Force on Community College Faculty (2017) is that faculty explicitly label their work as “a social justice calling.” Community college sociologists view cultivating a sociological imagination as a bulwark against social inequality and envision their work as a form of student empowerment. As social justice workers, the community college faculty, staff and administration featured in this session engage in an active research agenda and a “pedagogy of the oppressed,” creating a pathway for intersectional solidarity and social justice.

Participants: (Session Organizer and Presider) Brian Kapitulik, Greenfield Community College; (Discussant) Robin G. Isserles, CUNY Borough of Manhattan Community College

Building Equitable Work and Community Environments, Brian P. Kapitulik, Greenfield Community College
Community Colleges as Identity Realization Spaces, Arturo H. Enamorado III, Kingsborough Community College
Developing a Pedagogy that Instills Student Activism, Paoyi Huang, Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY

Connecting to Land: Joy, Health, Learning, and Indigenous Identity

The panel is a discussion lead by anti-colonial, anti-racist, feminist and 2S+ scholars on the special topic of connecting to land while centering joy, health, learning. The panel will highlight the work of those that centre Indigenous voices and knowledge, and are well-positioned to speak on the topic of intersectional solidarity and the future of anti-colonial connections to Land.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Yvonne P. Sherwood, University of Toronto; (Presider) Yvonne P. Sherwood, University of Toronto; (Panelist) Paul Pritchard, University of Toronto; (Panelist) Liliana Sampedro, UC San Diego; (Panelist) Andrew Jolivette, UC San Diego; (Panelist) Theresa Rocha Beardall, University of Washington; (Panelist) Vanessa Watts, McMaster University

Doubly Marginalized: Women’s Navigation of Racialized Organizations

An increasing body of work has understood racism as a central structuring force of organizational life. But racism is just one of many forces resulting in marginalization within organizations. How might the institutionalization of inequality through organizations vary across the matrix of domination? This panel brings together scholars working on racialized organizations from the perspectives of women professionals. The panel will include analyses of Asian American women in corporate contexts, cis white women faculty in DEI, and women of color in tech. Together, we will consider, what does an intersectional approach to racialized organizations reveal about modern workplace inequalities?

Participants: (Session Organizer) Oneya Fennell Okuwobi, University of Cincinnati; (Session Organizer) Laura Garbes, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities; (Presider) Oneya Fennell Okuwobi, University of Cincinnati; (Discussant) Laura Garbes, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Systemic Gendered Racism in White Institutional Spaces: Black Women and The Inclusion Tax, Tsedale Mekete Melaku, CUNY-Baruch College
Double Jeopardy – Asian American Women Navigating Race and Gender in the Corporate World, Margaret Chin, CUNY-Hunter College
It’s a Feature, Not a Bug: The Bureaucratic Practices that Stunt the Professional Advancement of Women of Color, Melissa Victoria Abad, Stanford University
Racial and Gendered Spaces: How Black Women Navigate Double Oppression, Veronica A Newton, Georgia State University
“I Accommodate Myself:” How Gendered Racism Curtails Disclosure among Women of Color with Disabilities, Oneya Fennell Okuwobi, University of Cincinnati

Hope in Climate Grief: Building Communities of Engagement in a Context of Environmental Loss

Climate grief is a sense of existential loss due to climate change. Young people are increasingly voicing feelings of loss, fear, and ‘eco-anxiety’ as they grapple with how to best respond to a set of environmental problems that their generation is not responsible for. At its worst, this grief can sap hope and turn into cynicism and detachment, as Obach (2023) reflected. But at its best, climate grief can motivate engagement. This expert panel discussion builds on conversations started in 2020 in the Environmental Sociology section of the ASA. Expanding on this year’s ASA theme, we invite a larger audience of sociologists to join us for a conversation about the parallel challenges of grief, loss and pain caused by structural issues, such as large-scale environmental disasters. We will offer models of forms of engagement in the classroom, as scholar-activists, and through our research.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Amanda McMillan Lequieu, Drexel University; (Panelist) Brian K. Obach, SUNY- New Paltz; (Presider) Gregory Hooks, McMaster University; (Panelist) Amanda McMillan Lequieu, Drexel University; (Panelist) Raka Sen, University of Pennsylvania; (Panelist) Maricarmen Hernández, Barnard College

How We Die and Live: Toward Another Sociology of Death

How do sociologists conceive death when loss is front and center in our lives? How do we know mourning as a historical condition afflicting entire communities, while highlighting its entanglements with hope, justice, and joy? These are the questions at the heart of this panel. The topics include: themes of Black joy and death in W. E. B. Du Bois’ writings on Reconstruction and the Civil Rights Era; loss and inventiveness in migrant death rites in the 20th century; issues of death, hope, and remembrance in contemporary genealogy research; and the power of ongoing environmental justice activism in the face of premature death in California.

Participants: (Session Organizer and Presider) Jyoti Puri, Simmons University; (Discussant) Amy Chin, Brown University

Language Loss in the Cambodian Diaspora: A Memoir, Freeden Blume Oeur, Tufts University
The Many Lives of Migrant Death, Jyoti Puri, Simmons University
What Can Dead People Teach Us? Genealogy, Remembrance, and Identity, Hector Carrillo, Northwestern University
Refusing and Defying Death: Asian and Latinx Immigrant Activists for Environmental Justice on the Politics of ‘Let Die’, Nadia Y. Kim, Loyola Marymount University

Increasing the Inclusion of Disability into the Landscape of Intersectionality Theory and Practice

Intersectional approaches focus on race, class, gender, and sexuality but pay less attention to disability. This session examines the intersection of disability with race and gender in the specific situations of parenting, sexuality, protest frames, accessible environments, and slogans (‘deaf gain,’ ‘black power,’ and ‘sisterhood is beautiful’) used by the three seemingly distinct social movements. Overall, the session shows how the incorporation of disability can expand knowledge in a number of social contexts.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Sharon N. Barnartt, Gallaudet University; (Presider) Sharon N. Barnartt, Gallaudet University; (Discussant) Sharon N. Barnartt, Gallaudet University

Race, Disability, and the Physical Accessibility of Environments, Derek C. Coates, University of California-Berkeley
After Racism Superseded Audism as the Dominant Protest Frame at a Deaf University, Can Intersectionality Flourish? Jeremy Brunson, Gallaudet University
Gender, Race and Disability: Parallels and Intersections in Research on Parenting Disabled Children, Sara E. Green, University of South Florida; Allison C. Carey, Shippensburg University
Queering Disabled Sexualities: Transformation Rather Than Assimilation, Alan Santinele Martino, Carleton University
’Black Power,’ ‘Deaf Gain,’ and ‘Sisterhood is Beautiful’: Convergences and Divergences between the Civil Rights, Feminist, and Disability Movements, Richard K. Scotch, University of Texas-Dallas

In-solidarity: Centering Joy in Theorizing Intersectionality

The history of intersectionality reflects attention to both the convergence of systems of oppression and the ways that marginalized people reinvent their worlds while remapping new layers of justice, instilling a sense of solidarity across difference for a broader politics of thriving—in sum, forms of what we may, in shorthand, refer to as joy. Being mindful that pleasure and joy can be overused, we consider them in the context of larger structural challenges, while also resisting the idea that structuring undermines possibilities of embracing joy. The proposed panel seeks to advance analyses of inequalities that connect and extend coalition work across differences; these panelists also engage questions of justice and pleasure, and of a hope that is productive. This intersectional engagement is rooted in feminist formations and women of color solidarities that have undoubtedly influenced not only studies of race and ethnicity, but also the sociologies of gender and sexualities, along with the tripartite of race-class-gender. The panelists engage with the important question: what is the place of joy in future theorizing of intersectionality? How can solidarities across difference support a world that incorporates, for instance, bodily autonomy (be it reducing Indigenous sexual violence, or sexual and reproductive rights for gestating bodies, or trans embodied experiences), while also surviving anti-Black State violence? A world where “undocujoy” persists in spite of children in cages? A world where neither incarceration nor healthcare reduce life chances for the poor and women and communities of color?

Participants: (Session Organizer) Salvador Vidal-Ortiz, American University; (Session Organizer) Rocio Garcia, Arizona State University; (Presider) Rocio Garcia, Arizona State University; (Panelist) Roderick A. Ferguson, Yale University; (Panelist) Angela Jones, SUNY-Farmingdale; (Panelist) Nancy López, University of New Mexico-Albuquerque; (Panelist) Jyoti Puri, Simmons University; (Panelist) Yvonne P. Sherwood, University of Toronto; (Discussant) Mary Romero, Arizona State University

Interrogating the Gaps, Travels, and Borders of Intersectionality as a Global Phenomenon

The theme of “Intersectional Solidarities: Building Communities of Hope, Justice, and Joy” prompts us to think how scholars of intersectionality build intellectual communities across disciplinary and regional borders. At the heart of intersectionality inquiries are feminist epistemologies, inquiries, and activism across the Global North and South. This panel fosters dialogue across regional and theoretical boundaries to understand contemporary struggles for justice and human rights. Thus far, Intersectionality’s institutionalization within the United States has enabled the concept to cross borders in two primary ways: geographically through varying forms of institutions and organizations and virtually via the internet and popular media (Hancock 2016). Contextualizing intersectionality (Falcón 2012) and how to foster dialogue from distinct regional and epistemological standpoints becomes an essential exercise to provide sociologists the foundation and tools to engage in the justice work that is foundational to the concept and theoretical framework. In so doing, our panel complicates the simplification and interrogates the misapplication of the concept to re-center the political substance to challenge its buzzword status (Hancock, 6). The different generations of feminist scholars will address the multitude of feminisms and heterogeneous plurality of theories of power that span time and space to create a critical dialogue around intersectionality that allows for the fissures, frictions, and affinities between feminists across the Global North and South.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Melissa Victoria Abad, Stanford University; (Presider) Melissa Victoria Abad, Stanford University; (Panelist) Firuzeh Shokooh-Valle, Franklin and Marshall College; (Panelist) Shaonta’ E. Allen, Dartmouth College; (Panelist) Pallavi Banerjee, University of Calgary; (Panelist) Roxanna Villalobos, University of California, Santa Cruz

Intersectional Methodologies and Building Epistemic Justice

Intersectionality recognizes that structures and identities do not exist independent of each other, and are rather co-constructed, often creating a complex convergence of oppression and privilege. As such, researchers should remain mindful of how their methodological choices and practices are implicated in interrupting, reinforcing, and/or potentially helping dismantle structural dimensions of power. In this panel we bring together researchers across qualitative, quantitative, community based, and other methodologies to discuss how engaging more inclusive and varied methods can lead to deeper intersectional understandings of social life, open space, and create opportunities for epistemic justice.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Celeste Curington, Boston University; (Session Organizer) Whitney Nicole Laster Pirtle, University of California-Merced; (Presider) Chaniqua Simpson, East Carolina University; (Panelist) LaToya Council, Lehigh University; (Panelist) Amber R. Crowell, California State University-Fresno; (Panelist) Sharla N. Alegria, University of Toronto; (Panelist) Chaniqua Simpson, East Carolina University

Liberating Abortion: Intersectional and Transnational Opportunities for Achieving Reproductive Justice

This panel centers intersectional and transnational research to explore the constraints and opportunities for reimagining and liberating abortion. Globally, abortion policy has trended toward legalization and decriminalization, with the United States as outlier in allowing state governments to criminalize abortion seekers and providers. Reacting to this change, advocates have looked to courts, professionalized medicine, and global public health authorities (e.g., the World Health Organization) for solutions, actions in line with the normative situating of abortion within medicalized and legalized frameworks in public and scholarly discourses. The construction of abortion as primarily—or even exclusively—intelligible through law and medicine, however, is not inevitable. Indeed, these frameworks not only fail historically excluded populations, they contribute to and perpetuate systemic oppression. In this thematic session, we ask what the liberation of abortion from legal and/or medicalized paradigms could look like. What, in other words, are alternative ways of “doing” abortion, with an emphasis on feminist, Global South, antiracist, and anti-institutionalist approaches and experiences? While much abortion research has engaged questions of public opinion or the social movement politics of abortion, this session interrogates different questions, including critiques of contemporary models of abortion health services and exploration of alternatives; the discursive and material location of abortion care within existing reproductive healthcare systems, including those that are under-resourced and fragmented; and reconceptualization of the social imaginary of abortion. We seek to open conceptual space for new un-imaginables, including opportunities for joy in abortion and the possibilities of self-ownership of all pregnancy outcomes.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Katrina E. Kimport, UC San Francisco; (Presider) Katrina E. Kimport, UC San Francisco; (Discussant) Kelly Marie Ward, University of Wisconsin – Madison

The Causal Capacity of ‘Abortion’: How the Social Imaginary of Abortion Deflects Efforts for Transformative Social Justice, Katrina E. Kimport, UC San Francisco
Queering Abortion, Krystale E. Littlejohn, University of Oregon
Effacing Institutional Abortion Boundaries: Feminist Praxis in Argentina, Julia A McReynolds-Pérez, College of Charleston
Into Women’s Hands: Authorized and Off-Label Use of Misoprostol in Burkina Faso and Senegal, Siri Suh, Brandeis University
Permission not Required: Imagining Abortion Outside the Hegemonic Constraints of Law and Medicine, Tracy A. Weitz, American University

Opening Doors and Building Community: The University as a Site for Building Intersectional Solidarity and Research

While many theorize universities as structures that reproduce racialized and gendered forms of inequality, this session focuses on universities as a site for intersectional solidarity, research, and social justice. We begin with a paper on the history of Center for Research on Women at the University of Memphis in the 80s and 90s, an institution that opened its doors to graduate students of color and built a collaborative community of junior and senior scholars who did pathbreaking research and workshops on race, class, and gender—before intersectionality had become a concept. Our second panelist examines UC Berkeley in the 1970s when AFSCME Local 1695, a predominantly white, female clerical union, opened its doors to Black women, built intersectional alliances, and successfully challenged the university’s racialized and gendered organizational structure. Our third and fourth panelists explore non-extractive, community-building models of university research. Creating community partnerships in Hawai’i and participating in Indigenous-Led resurgence on climate change, this research compels us to think about the importance of restoring human and other-than-human relations as central to mitigating the impact of global warming. Our final panelist’s community research shows how people restored human relationships during the pandemic when they lost their every-day routines and support systems. In building these intersectional solidarities, they also created new refusals to the world of work.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Jennifer L. Pierce, University of Minnesota; (Presider) Andreana L. Clay, San Francisco State University; (Discussant) Ivy Ken, George Washington University

Collective Advancement: Building a Community of Scholars Through the Memphis Center for Research on Women, Elizabeth Higginbotham, University of Delaware; Bonnie Thornton Dill, University of Maryland-College Park
Doing Social Justice in the Ivory Basement: Clerical Workers’ Unionism, Feminism, and Anti-Racism at UC Berkeley, Jennifer L. Pierce, University of Minnesota
Kīpuka2Kīpuka Resurgence: Building Community Partnerships in a Post-Pandemic World, Hokulani K Aikau, University of Hawaʻi at Mānoa
Tethers and Tight Spaces: Harvesting Stories from the Pandemic, Karla A. Erickson, Grinnell College

Pedagogy as Empowerment: Representation, Joy, and Critique in the Sociological Classroom

This panel invites educators to discuss strategies for bringing empowerment into the sociological classroom. A common approach for Introductory Sociology classes is to expose social problems but content often stops short of discussing emancipatory solutions to these issues. How do we move past this diagnostic approach and move towards classroom experiences that help students imagine possibilities for transformative futures? In this session, we welcome Sociology educators to share their student-centered pedagogies, in-class activities, and materials that promote empathy and representation, and approaches to building relationships through student mentorship.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Sara Lucia Martucci, CUNY-John Jay College of Criminal Justice; (Presider) Yolanda Ortiz-Rodriguez, CUNY-John Jay College of Criminal Justice; (Discussant) Sara Lucia Martucci, CUNY-John Jay College of Criminal Justice

Towards a Student-Centered Pedagogy: Empathy In-Person and Online, Sara Lucia Martucci, CUNY-John Jay College of Criminal Justice, and Melanie Lorek, CUNY School of Professional Studies
RaceTalk in the Brave Classroom, Bedelia Nicola Richards, University of Richmond
Belonging Champions Community of Practice, Jessica A. Leveto, Kent State University at Ashtabula
Applying Indigenous Ways of Knowing to C. Wright Mills Sociological Imagination in Introductory Sociology Courses, Pamela Monaghan-Geernaert, Northern State University
Healing Informed Sociology, Sarah Pitcher, San Diego City College

Pleasure Activism: Can Social Justice Work be Joyful, Caring and Imaginative?

Scholarship on activism has often focused on the pressing and immediate issues of concern linked to rising inequality and various interconnected forms of social, economic, spatial and ecological (in)justice. Scholarship has also focused on organizing tactics, liberatory learning, and methods for and modes of solidarity. While these are all important facets of activist studies in sociology, there is an emerging body of scholarship looking at the social and cultural fabric of activist connection and action. For this panel we are drawn to unpacking the role of joy, pleasure, desire and creativity that underpins activism.

Activist organisations and organizing has always been infused by emotional politics that are often fueled by frustration and rage, but also always infused with collective joy, desire and mutural pleasure in work that involves social justice. We are increasingly seeing how feminist and queer activists in particular are attending to activism in expanded ways that include care, joy and pleasure. For some time creative practice has been enmeshed in activism – from fiction to film, public-facing art and performance, and various forms of socially engaged art practices.

In this panel we ask: How can we understand social justice work as pleasureable? What social and political organizing around activist work is suffused with desire? What is the role of interpersonal and collaborative joy in social justice work? How do activists buffer and protect themselves through social and cultural communities of care (that often blur the boundaries between political and leisure spaces)? What kinds of imaginative practices allow for conditions for enjoyment to animate social justice work? We ask panelists to explore how these concepts of ‘activism’, ‘social justice’, ‘pleasure’, ‘leisure’, ‘joy’, ‘desire’ interact with each other in practice and as part of political projects, and how they can enrich transformative action.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Amrita Pande, University of Cape Town; (Session Organizer) Rika Sitas, University of Cape Town; (Presider) Amrita Pande, University of Cape Town; (Panelist) Asanda-Jonas Benya, University of Cape Town; (Panelist) Rika Sitas, University of Cape Town; (Panelist) Firuzeh Shokooh Valle, Franklin & Marshall College; (Panelist) Derek Siegel, University of Massachusetts Amherst; (Panelist) Swati Birla, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Sociology for Hope

We’re living in a period of converging threats: climate change, white supremacy, and unapologetic capitalism, to name a few. But we’re also witnessing the accumulating awakenings of mass desire for reparations, justice, and true freedom. The 2024 theme challenges us to explore the role of sociology as an active participant in these movements. This thematic session answers the call by posing the following questions: How are sociologists characterizing our current socio-political moment? What are its defining threats, challenges and opportunities? How are sociologists, individually and collectively, intervening in the moment? How are we combating the threats and contributing to the work of change? What are our sources of hope for this moment? And in turn, how can we—and sociology as a discipline—serve as sources of hope?

The prospective panelists represent a range of substantive interests: the study of sociology as a discipline, global social and political trends, movements for racial justice, labor organizing and class inequality, sexual identity and expression. They also span career stages and academic settings. All of them have agreed to be listed as potential participants.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Sanjiv Gupta, University of Massachusetts-Amherst; (Panelist) Itty Abraham, Arizona State University; (Panelist) Eric Benjamin Blanc, Rutgers; (Panelist) Nadia Y. Kim, Loyola Marymount University; (Panelist) Aldon D. Morris, Northwestern University; (Presider) Sanjiv Gupta, University of Massachusetts-Amherst

Teaching Intersectionality

Kimberle Crenshaw’s “Mapping the Margins” argued compellingly in 1989 that systems of inequality, such as racism and sexism, cannot be studied in isolation, but rather must be understood as intersecting with one another. This intersectionality paradigm has been deeply influential in Sociology since then, encouraging scholars to recognize how experiences with inequality are shaped by the multiple identities that individuals possess. But these lessons can often be challenging to integrate into the classroom. Some professors find it so difficult to convince resistant students that inequality is a major social problem that thinking intersectionally about the topic ultimately becomes de-prioritized. Other professors have found that even social justice-oriented students may struggle to see inequalities as intersecting, treating them as additive rather than understanding how they inform one another. This session brings together scholars from a variety of academic institutions to share practical pedagogical tools for teaching intersectionality to undergraduates at multiple levels and across a variety of subjects.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Jaime Hartless, SUNY Farmingdale; (Presider) Jaime Hartless, SUNY Farmingdale; (Panelist) Michel Estefan, University of California-San Diego; (Panelist) Simone Alexandra Kolysh, Hood College; (Panelist) Nik M. Lampe, University of South Florida; (Panelist) Marisela Martinez-Cola, Morehouse College

The Joy of Being from a Marginalized Group

Sociologists have tended to downplay the importance of joy because of the misperception that doing so could lead to obfuscating oppression and inequality and promoting a pollyannish accounting of social life. This is particularly so when it comes to marginalized groups. Narratives about inequity overwhelmingly accentuate the misery, violence, and oppression that people from marginalized groups experience. Yet, recent work has demonstrated the methodological and theoretical importance of studying joy, particularly the joy of being a member of a marginalized group. As this works demonstrates, documenting the joyful aspects of people’s lives makes an important intervention in these persistent narratives by adding nuance to understandings of the lived experiences of marginalized people that has been absent from much of the sociological scholarship. This proposed panel will feature scholars working in a new area of sociological inquiry – joy – and highlight the novel insights gained when social scientists begin to ask new questions, and tell different narratives, about marginalized groups.

Participants: (Session Organizer) Laurel Westbrook, Grand Valley State University; (Session Organizer) stef m. shuster, Michigan State University; (Presider) Jess Burnham, Michigan State University; (Panelist) Simone Ispa-Landa, Northwestern University; (Panelist) Angela Jones, SUNY-Farmingdale; (Panelist) Kim-Phuong Truong-Vu, University of Miami; (Panelist) Terrell James Antonio Winder, University of California-Santa Barbara; (Panelist) JJ/Jessica Wright, MacEwan University

Transnational Solidarities: From Ukraine to Palestine and Beyond

US sociology has often treated the United States as its unexamined default. The US public, too, is notoriously inattentive to matters of foreign policy. How, then, do sociologists explain the groundswell of media attention and solidarity activism following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022? Will this unprecedented moment inaugurate a transnational turn in Western politics? Or does it merely affirm the racialized empathy gap that benefits ‘whites’ over non-whites? Compare: Ukraine advocates garnered more support in February 2022 than Palestine activists have been able to generate in seventy-five years. Still lower on the list of Western priorities are brief, ill-informed flashes-in-the-pan like the “Kony 2012” movement. How do intersections of whiteness, queerness, Jewishness, MENA, or Islam shape the degree, form, and content of transnational solidarities? To what degree are they constrained and enabled by alliances with superpowers like the US, China, and Russia? What other affinities explain, for instance, high levels of Palestine solidarity in Ireland? This session seeks to explore how sociology can uncover, extend, and mobilize solidarities across symbolic and material borders in pursuit of a better world.

Participants: (Session Organizer and Presider) Andrew J. Shapiro, The Graduate Center, CUNY; (Panelist) Areej Sabbagh-Khoury, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; (Panelist) Michael D. Kennedy, Brown University; (Panelist) Ori Swed, Texas Tech University; (Panelist) Emily Schneider; Northern Arizona University