It is with Great Sadness that the Department of Sociology Mourns the Loss of Professor Bill Chambliss (1933-2014)
We are sorry to report that the Department of Sociology and the entire GW community have lost a dear friend and colleague. Bill Chambliss, Professor of Sociology at GW for over 25 years, died on February 22, 2014. Click here for more about Bill's legacy from department chair, Greg Squires. Related articles can be found on the websites for the Society for the Study of Social Problems and the Law & Society Association. To honor Bill's legacy we have created a fund that will help us provide graduate student packages, financial aid, and other support for our most deserving students. More information can be found here. And if you would like to make a gift in honor of Bill, please visit go.gwu.edu/billchambliss.
SOCIOLOGY DEPARTMENT NEWSLETTER click here
Upcoming Events
Event: A Celebration of the 67th Anniversary of Jackie Robinson's Historic Breakthrough. Join us on Tuesday, April 22nd from 5:45-8:00pm in the Grand Ballroom (third floor) of the Marvin Center, 801 21st St NW, Washington DC 20052. One of the highlights will be the presentation of a Jackie Robinson Award to a GW baseball player who best exhibits the qualities demonstrated by Jackie Robinson. Also presented will be the Jackie Robinson Project Community Recognition Award and two Jackie and Rachel Robinson Society Appreciation Awards. To reserve a seat for yourself and up to three guests, RSVP to rbzamoff@gwu.edu or terasav@gwu.edu or call 202-603-0955. Light refreshments and beverages will be served.
Lecture: "All-In Nation: An America that Works for All" with Vanessa Cárdenas, Vice President Progress 2050 at The Center for American Progress in Washington DC. Join us Thursday, April 17 from 11am to 12pm in Marvin Center, Room 405, 800 21st St NW, Washington, DC 20052.
Symposium: "Is Equitable Development Possible in the 21st Century? Prospects and Possibilities in Washington, DC" with Professor Greg Squires. This event is co-sponsored by the GW Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service. Join us on Thursday, March 27 from 9:00-2:00pm in the Marvin Center Grand Ballroom, 800 21st St NW, 3rd Floor, Washington, DC 20052.
Lecture: “Race, Class, and the Politics of School Choice” with Mary Pattillo, Professor of Sociology and African American Studies at Northwestern University. Join us Tuesday, March 25 from 10:00-11:30am in the Marvin Center, Room 311, 800 21st St NW, 3rd Floor, Washington, DC 20052.
Lecture: "The Europeanization of Holocaust Memory in Eastern Europe" with Marek Kucia, Associate Professor of Sociology at Jagiellonian University, Krakow, Poland. Join us Monday, March 17 from 4:30-6:00pm in Gelman Library, Room 702, 2130 H St NW, Washington, DC 20052.
Visit our facebook page for more updates, events, and new course descriptions.
New Faculty Books
Discover Sociology. William J. Chambliss and Daina S. Eglitis (Sage, 2013).
From Foreclosure to Fair Lending: Advocacy, Organizing, Occupy and the Pursuit of Equitable Credit. Gregory Squires and Chester Hartman, Eds. (New Village Press, 2013).
The Long, Lingering Shadow: Slavery, Race, and Law in the American Hemisphere. Robert J. Cottrol (University of Georgia Press, Studies in the Legal History of the South series, 2013)
Religion, Politics, and Polarization How Religiopolitical Conflict Is Changing Congress and American Democracy. William V. D'Antonio, Steven A. Tuch, and Josiah R. Baker (Roman & Littlefield, 2013).
Faculty
Fran Buntman was awarded CCAS’s Excellence in Undergraduate Department Advising Award for the 2012-2013 academic year. She has just published “Supermaximum Prisons in South Africa” in The Globalization of Supermax Prisons (co-authored with Lukas Muntingh, ed. Jeff Ross, Rutgers U. Press, 2013). She was recently featured on WAMU’s Kojo Nnamdi Show speaking about the legacy of Nelson Mandela. This past fall she was a panelist discussing two theater productions: Folger Shakespeare Library’s presentation of The Robben Island Bible, and Theater J’s performance of After the Revolution. She is the director of GW’s new interdisciplinary Law and Society minor, housed in the Department of Sociology.
Robert Cottrol published The Long, Lingering Shadow: Slavery, Race, and Law in the American Hemisphere (University of Georgia Press, Studies in the Legal History of the South series, 2013) and "Positive Discrimination/Affirmative Action with Respect to Gender and Race," (co-author Megan Davis) in Routledge Handbook of Constitutional Law, edited by Mark Tushnet, Thomas Fleiner and Cheryl Saunders (Routledge, 2013).
Hiromi Ishizawa was awarded a GW Selective Excellence Fellowship. She also received a George Washington University Facilitating Fund grant for her project, “Civic Participation among Young Adults across Immigrant Generations.” She was selected as a 2009-10 Policy Research Scholar at the George Washington Institute of Public Policy for the project, “Trajectories of Civic Engagement among Children of Immigrants.”
Antwan Jones received a New Connections grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation for his project "Residential Instability and Adolescent Obesity: The Role of the Built Environment."
Michelle Kelso presented a talk in November 2011 for the Institute for European, Russian and Eurasian Studies entitled "Post-Communist Construction of Holocaust Memory: A Case Study of Romanian Roma."
Ivy Ken has been appointed to the editorial board of Gender & Society. The official journal of Sociologists for Women in Society, Geneder & Society was founded in 1987 as an outlet for feminist social science and is a top-ranked journal in both sociology and women's studies.
Peter Konwerski was named Dean of Students and Senior Associate Vice President for the Division of Student and Academic Support Services in 2010.
Daniel Martínez, who joined the department this year, is teaching a new course, Transnational Crime. He is scheduled to deliver papers at the 2014 meetings of the Society for Applied Anthropology, the Southern Sociological Society, the Population Association of America, and the American Sociological Association. He has been invited to deliver a paper for the Race & Ethnic Studies Institute and Sociology Department at Texas A & M University in March. Martínez was recently highlighted in the GW Arts & Sciences magazine for his work on the impact of U.S. border policies. He was also selected to travel with a group of GW students to Nicaragua on an Alternative Break trip in January 2014.
Greg Squires received the 2013 Lester F. Ward Distinguished Contributor to Applied and Clinical Sociology Award from the Association for Applied and Clinical Sociology. The award was given at the annual conference of AACS in Portland, Oregon where he was invited to deliver the keynote address, "Inequality, Advocacy, and the Foreclosure Crisis," which will also be published in the Journal of Applied Social Science. His new book, From Foreclosure to Fair Lending: Advocacy, Organizing, Occupy and the Pursuit of Equitable Credit, co-edited with Chester Hartman, was released by New Village Press (2013).
Steven Tuch received a 2013-14 University Facilitating Fund award for his project “Racial and Ethnic Differences in Residential Preferences in ‘Post-Racial’ America.” His book Religion, Politics, and Polarization, coauthored with William D’Antonio and Josiah Baker, was published in 2013 by Rowman & Littlefield. In November 2013, he gave an invited talk at the symposium on “Student Perceptions of Race Relations at the University of Alabama: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives” in Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Ron Weitzer recently participated in an online debate on prostitution policy in the libertarian Cato Institute's journal, Cato Unbound, in December 2013. He and three other authors posted original and rebuttal essays (1, 2, 3), which attracted substantial interest from readers. He is co-editor of a special issue of The Annals which will include a collection of 13 articles on human trafficking to be published May 2014.
Current Students
ESS Conference: MA students Priya Dhanani, Megan McNeil, Natalie Newman, Brianne Painia, Noel Walters delivered papers at the 2014 Eastern Sociological Society meeting. And two of our undergraduates, J. Doug Harrison and Chris Evans, presented posters. The event was held February 20-23 in Baltimore, MD. These students joined a robust group of many of the Department's faculty members who also delivered papers at the meeting.
Scholarships: Congratulations to MA student Priya Dhanani who has been awarded two scholarships this year. She recieved a GW Columbian Women's Scholarship last fall and a ShivKrupa Scholarship this spring. Both prizes reward outstanding academic achievement, leadership, and civic involvement. For more about Priya's research on violence against women and human trafficking click here.
Alumni News
Grace Friedberger (BA, Soc '07) is working at the Office of the State Superintendent of Education (OSSE) in Washington DC on numerous projects related to the Healthy Schools Act.
Julie Garfield (BA, Soc '05) published an article "Landscaping Neo-Liberalism: The Weed and Seed Strategy" in Advocates' Forum about the problematic "weed and seed" policy to remove criminals from poor urban neighborhoods. After receiving her BA in Sociology, Garfield earned an MA in Social Service Administration from the University of Chicago and currently works as an individual development specialist for The Cara Program in Chicago.
Clara Hanson (BA, Soc '12) has entered the MLA program in Gastronomy at Boston University.
Cheryl Walton (BA, Soc '11) has been selected as a Fulbright Scholar for 2014. She is teaching English in Malaysia through a Department of State Exchange Program. Click here for Cheryl's story and her list of accomplishments at GW and beyond. She is an outstanding example of what students can do with a degree in Sociology!
