News & Events

In Memoriam

The Department lost a dear friend with the passing of Ruth Wallace on March 2, 2016. Ruth was an integral part of Sociology at GW where she taught for 31 years. And she was a giant in the field of sociology in the US and around the world. Through her many books, journal articles, public lectures, and other venues she was a pioneering voice in sociological theory, gender, and religion. Among her publications were the following books: They Call Him Pastor: Married Men in Charge of Catholic Parishes, Contemporary Sociological Theory: Expanding the Classical Tradition, (co-authored with Alison Wolf), Gender and the Academic Experience: Berkeley Women Sociologists. (coedited with Kathryn Meadow Orlans), They Call Her Pastor: A New Role for Catholic Women. and Feminism and Sociological Theory. Among the many awards she won were the American Sociological Association's Jessie Bernard Award for scholarly work on the role of women in society, the District of Columbia Sociological Society's Stuart Rice Award for Outstanding Contributions to Sociology, the Religious Research Association's H. Paul Douglass Lecturer, Marquette University's Joseph McGee Lecturer, and Santa Clara University's Distinguished Visiting Scholar. She will be missed by everyone who had the opportunity to know her. -- Greg Squires

Recent Faculty Books

Happiness is the Wrong Metric. Amitai Etzioni. Springer Open. 2018.

Forthcoming. The Fight for Fair Housing: Causes, Consequences and Future Implications of the 1968 Federal Fair Housing Act. Gregory D. Squires (ed). Routledge, 2018.

Meltdown: The Financial Crisis, Consumer Protection, and the Road Forward. Larry Kirsch and Gregory D. Squires. Praeger, 2017.

Privacy in a Cyber Age: Policy and Practice. Amitai Etzioni. Palgrave Macmillan, 2015.

The New Normal: Finding a Balance between Individual Rights and the Common Good. Amitai Etzioni. Transaction Publishers, 2014.

Discover Sociology. William J. Chambliss and Daina S. Eglitis. Sage, 2013.

Faculty News

Fran Buntman is very busy on sabbatical in 2017-2018. She began her sabbatical by completing a paper on Prisons, Law, Repression, and Resistance based on her earlier keynote address to the International Conference on Colonial Incarceration in the 20th Century in Lisbon, Portugal. She gave papers in New York and Austin, Texas about prison and resistance in honor of and memory of Dr. Barbara Harlow, one of her mentors. She has extended her involvement in local DC criminal justice issues, including to give testimony to the DC Council about needs for the DC jail.

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).

Cynthia Deitch received a Community Based Participatory Research grant for 2015-2016 from the GW Center for Civic Engagement and Public Service. In collaboration with the DC Ceneter for Employment Justice, she will be conducting research on the DC paid sick leave law. 

Daina Eglitis recently published the third edition of her introductory textbook, Discover Sociology (Sage, 2017), which was recently awarded the 2018 Textbook & Academic Authors Association Textbook Excellence Award. In 2016, she co-authored (with colleagues Fran Buntman and Dameon Alexander) the article, “Social Issues and Problem-based Learning in Sociology: Opportunities and Challenges in the Undergraduate Classroom,” which was published in Teaching Sociology.

Michelle Kelso spent the fall semester working on her manuscript about Roma and collective memory of the Holocaust in Romania as well as teaching as a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Bucharest. She was also interviewed on several national Romanian news program on Digi TV and Realitatea TV regarding the sociological aspects of the U.S. presidential election. This April she will be speaking at the British Sociological Association on "Reflections on Holocaust Education of the Roma Genocide in Romania." Michelle became a contributor for the Huffington Post and for University World News and recently published a book chapter "Reflection on Holocaust Education of the Roma genocide in Romania"  in Reimagining utopias: Theory and method for educational research in post-socialist contexts (Sense Publishing).

Ivy Ken published an article in the 2016 issue of the Yearbook of Women's History (Jaarboek voor Vrouwengeschiedenis) on Gendered Food Practices from Seed to Waste.  The article, written with Benjamín Elizalde, focuses on the neoliberal harms and political possibilities experienced by women in a rural, southern Chilean town who received technical assistance from the state on organic farming techniques and personal development.  Dr. Ken also delivered a presentation at the Hawaii Sociological Association in Hilo this February (2018) on her paper title "When Food is Profit: An Actor-Network Translation". Prof. Ken also  serves as GW Food Institute Faculty Coordinator.

Hilary Silver joined the GW faculty in January 2017 as Professor of Sociology and Public Policy and Public Administration.  Her most recent publications include "National Urban Policy in the Age of Obama,” pp. 11-44 in James DeFilippis, ed. Urban Policy in the Time of Obama (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2016) and “Youth Exclusion in the Middle East.” The Muslim World 107, 1 (2017): 13-40.

Greg Squires' co-authored book (with Larry Kirsch) Meltdown:  The Financial Crisis, Consumer Protection, and the Road Forward  tracing the first five years of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau in action was published by Praeger, in March 2017.  His op eds on the CFPB have appeared in the American Banker, The Hill, and Social Policy. This past April, he was awarded the George Washington University Jackie and Rachel Robinson Society Appreciation Award in recognition and support to the sociological and historical connection between race and sports in America. appeared on a panel at the National Museum of African-American History and Culture on January 25th , to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Fair Housing Act. He is the editor of the recently published book, The Fight for Fair Housing: Causes, Consequences, and Future Implications of the 1968 Federal Fair Housing Act (Routledge 2018).

Steven Tuch is continuing work on his Dean’s Research Scholar project examining the racial attitudes and intergroup experiences of high school students. A book chapter, “The Color of the Dream: Latinos, African Americans, and the American Dream,” recently appeared in Latino/a American Dream (S.L. Hanson and J.K. White, eds.) published by Texas A&M University Press. His coauthored article with Michelle Kelso, “Exploring the Nexus Between Human Services and Sociology Through Engaged Scholarship,” recently appeared in Zeszyty Pracy Socjalnej (Issues in Social Work). During the 2017-18 academic year he will be a visiting scholar in the Institute of Sociology at Jagiellonian University in Cracow, Poland working on a study of causal attributions of inequality among citizens in post-communist and capitalist nations.

Ron Weitzer was featured in a debate, in Congressional Quarterly Researcher, on whether pornography has implications for public health. He was quoted by The Christian Science Monitor in the article “Backpage.com shutters 'adult' ads section: Did it do enough to stop child sex trafficking?” In March 2018, Professor Weitzer gave invited talks on the topic "Researching and Comparing Legal Prostitution Systems in Europe" at the University of Hong Kong and the University of Macau. He conducted preliminary research in both cities. 

Richard Zamoff has been leading the Jackie Robinson Project's Educational Initiative where he visited schools and appeared on the local cable news show, "People To Be Heard."