Professor of Sociology Sandi Nenga presented her paper “Processes of Cultural Capital in a College Readiness Program Aimed at Latinx, First-Generation Students” at the 2020 American Sociological Association meetings on August 8 (held online).

Megan Piel  ’20 participated in the American Sociological Association’s 2020 Undergraduate Honors Program (held online) on August 8. She presented her paper “Religion, Gender, and Attitudes towards the LGBTQ+ Community,” which was originally written for the Research Methods class in sociology.

Associate Professor of Sociology Reggie Byron is reviewing more than 35 published articles (as the only invited reviewer from a liberal-arts university) for the prestigious Richard Scott Best Article Award through the Organizations, Occupations, and Work section of the American Sociological Association.

Associate Professor of Sociology Reggie Byron had a peer-reviewed article titled “Neighborhood Context, Race, and U.S. Newspaper Coverage of Home-Invasion Crime” accepted for publication in the Journal of Criminal Justice and Popular Culture.

Professor of Sociology Maria Lowe, Associate Professor of Sociology Reggie Byron, and student coauthors Holly O’Hara ’17 and Dakota Cortez ’19 had a peer-reviewed article titled “Neutralized Hegemonic Banter: The Persistence of Sexist and Racist Joking among Undergraduate Students” accepted for publication in Sociological Inquiry. This is the fourth such coauthored campus climate–related study that Lowe and Byron have published.

Part-Time Assistant Professor of Anthropology Naomi Reed was interviewed by CBS News to contribute to a Web and television segment on a Texas textbook’s representations of slavery and Black people. The article reads in part, “CBS News is not the first to point out problems with The American Pageant. Dr. Naomi Reed is a sociocultural anthropologist and professor at Southwestern University in Texas. She looked at the 12th edition of the textbook in 2007 and the 15th edition in 2015, and said it consistently takes a white redemptive narrative of American history.” You can read the article here.

Sociology alumna Samantha Pentecost ’19 has had her capstone paper, “Gendering the Boy Scouts: Examining Hegemonic Masculinity at a Coed Backpacking Camp,” accepted for publication in the Journal for Undergraduate Ethnography(vol. 10, no. 2). In addition, sociology alumna Madeline Carrola ’19 received the best undergraduate paper award for her capstone paper, “Performing TheHandmaid’s Tale: The Use of Dystopian Literature at Political Protests,” at the October 2019 Mid-South Sociological Association meeting. Both capstone papers were written under the direction of Professor of Sociology Maria Lowe.

Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson’s article “Creole Becoming and the Commons: Black Freedom in Belize” has been published in Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space. It is the first article published as part of a special themed section titled The Commons, Commoning, and Co-Becoming, edited by Neera Singh, Ursula Lang, and Gustavo Garcia Lopez. It is available online here. 

Associate Professor of Sociology Reggie Byron presented a paper titled “Neighborhood Context, Race, and Newspaper Coverage of Home-Invasion Crime” at the Policy Studies Organization’s 2019 International Criminology Conference in Washington, DC, on October 31.

Professor of Anthropology Melissa Johnson gave a talk based on her book Becoming Creole: Nature and Race in Belize at the University of Kentucky (UK) on September 26, 2019. The talk was part of the UK’s Year of Equity series of events and was sponsored by the UK College of Arts and Sciences, Latin American and Caribbean Studies Program, and Anthropology Department.