~the-society-pages | Bookmarks (109)

Some people still have stress dreams about high school exams. I still have stress dreams about working for David Bouley. Famed chef David Bouley passed away in February 2024. His New York Times obituary notes that his masterful cooking transformed fine dining. As a former employee of Bouley’s, I know the class politics of fine […]

A large college lecture hall, with some seats brightly lit and others covered in an ominous shadow. Photo by Pixabay from Pexels under Pexels license. On November 9th, 2023 the Florida Board of Governors voted to remove “Principles of Sociology” from the list of required courses at all public colleges. Manny Diaz Jr, the state’s […]

New & Noteworthy TSP board member Caroline Garland‘s latest Discovery on work by Andréa Becker covers some research on the different experiences of pressures of hysterectomies towards cis women, women of color, and non-binary communities. This week’s Clippings includes Zeynep Tufekci‘s op-ed for the New York Times on the media frenzy surrounding Kate Middleton’s disappearance from the […]

We are thrilled to welcome Benjamin Shestakofsky to the Contexts Blog to celebrate the publication of his new book, Behind the Startup: How Venture Capital Shapes Work, Innovation, and Inequality. In this post, blog editor Elena van Stee chats with Ben about everyday life inside a tech startup and the consequences of venture capital funding. You can watch the […]

Reprinted from Council on Contemporary Families Brief Reports published on May 31, 2023 Recent infant formula shortages in the United States have reignited debates about the importance of breastfeeding for child health and development. Major health and medical organizations unanimously recommend that mothers exclusively breastfeed their infants for six months or more, and breastfeeding has […]

Zeynep Tufekci (Professor of Sociology and Public Affairs at Princeton) wrote an op-ed for the New York Times in response to the media frenzy surrounding Kate Middleton’s disappearance from the public eye for an unspecified surgery. Tufekci compares the public response to prior treatment of Meghan Markle, highlighti...

In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Hannah McCann, Senior Lecturer in Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne, author of Queering Femininity: Sexuality, Feminism and the Politics of Presentation, and co-author of Queer Theory Now (which we discussed on an earlier episode of the podcast). In our conversation, Hannah introduces us to the […]

Andréa Becker, “Stratified Reproduction, Hysterectomy, and the Social Process of Opting into Infertility,” Gender and Society, 2023 A patient signing a form in a doctor’s office. Image by SHVETS production under Pexels license. Reproductive rights are considered a hot-button topic by many, but different groups can face different pressures in exercising these rights. Moreover, rights […]

Dear Junior Faculty Colleagues, Teaching community-based learning (CBL) courses is one of the most rewarding pedagogies for students and professors, so we commend your interest in taking on this challenge. At the same time, this pedagogical approach requires a lot of preparation and dedication to ensure its success. With this in mind, we write this […]

I have to be honest. When I first got the invitation to write an essay for First Publics, I wasn’t much interested. I didn’t think it was for me. The reason is that I had assumed that First Publics—this wonderful new TSP blog spot for sociology instructors—was going to be all about and for sociology […]

Do you know how many missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQQIA1 people are in what is now called “Canada”? Shockingly, it appears that the police do not. In a recent article in Gender & Society, Jerry Flores and Andrea Román Alfaro investigate the inadequate response of law enforcement agencies to such crimes and […]

Why write for Contexts Magazine? Hear from the authors who have published with us! In this video, Contexts feature essay authors Stephanie Canizales, Chiara Cooper, and Gary Alan Fine explain why they wanted to publish with Contexts. Spoiler: it’s a great way to reach the public. We want to help communicate your findings about an […]

New & Noteworthy Mallory Harrington has a new Discovery on work by Joss Greene on some of the history of gender boundaries in men’s prisons. Covering 1941-2018, this Discovery provides a succinct summary of the development of addressing gender in prisons. Our media report this week includes The Amsterdam News coverage of Elizabeth Ross Haynes, an African […]

The Amsterdam News ran a feature on Elizabeth Ross Haynes, sociologist and women’s rights advocate. Haynes’ master’s thesis, Two Million Negro Women at Work (1922), was “praised for decades as the most comprehensive study of Black women in the United States.” Haynes’ work highlighted the lack of training opportuniti...

Joss Greene, “Gender Bound: Making, Managing, and Navigating Prison Gender Boundaries, 1941–2018,” American Journal of Sociology, 2023 A bare prison cell with a bunk bed, metal chair, and toilet. Image from RDNE Stock project under Pexels license. Gender segregation is a core feature of American prisons, with men and women separated out into separate facilities. […]

In this episode we are joined by Ugo Corte, Professor of Sociology at the University of Stavanger, author of Dangerous Fun: The Social Lives of Big Wave Surfers (2022 University of Chicago Press), and winner of the 2023 Charles Horton Cooley Award from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction.Ugo introduces us to the […]

New & Noteworthy Nicole Schmitgen has a new Discovery on work by Margarita Torre on women and union support. According to her research, 11% of Black women are a part of unions, more than other racial groups of women. Future union participation by women is expected to rise. Our Clippings Media Report includes The Cut interview […]

In her Winter 2024 Contexts feature, “Pushing Back on ‘Black Don’t Crack,’” Dr. Alicia Smith-Tran explores the ways age, gender, and race intersect to produce unique binds—and additional unseen labor—for professional Black women. “I think the broader public certainly thinks of looking youthful as the ideal,” she explains, but that’s not always the case, “depending […]

Margarita Torre, “Women in the New Labor Activism: Gender Trends in Attitudes Toward Unions,” Work and Occupations, 2023 A woman wearing a hard hat and safety glasses working on an engine. Image from Chevanon Photography under Pexels license. Unionizing and strikes continue to maintain headlines, but labor unions and strikes have been intertwined with American […]

Dr. Sofya Aptekar is the author of the Winter 2024 feature article “Green Card Soldiers.” In this video, she chats with Contexts graduate student editor Colter Uscola about why she wanted to publish with our journal and what she hopes readers will take away from her research. Aptekar finds that “citizenship is not actually that […]

The Cut interviewed Gretchen Sisson (Sociologist at Advancing New Standards in Reproductive Health (ANSIRH) at the University of California San Francisco) about her new book Relinquished: The Politics of Adoption and the Privilege of American Motherhood, which highlights experiences of birthmothers in the adoption i...

During the Fall of 2023, First Publics published a series of interviews with four authors of Intro to Sociology textbooks: Dalton Conley, author of You May Ask Yourself: An Introduction to Thinking Like a Sociologist; Shamus Khan, one of the authors and editors of A Sociology Experiment; Lisa Wade, author of Terrible Magnificent Sociology; and […]

Intro to Sociology courses often serve as the “public” face of the field, but how do they contribute to students’ “mental image” of sociology? Miskolczi (2023) conducted a qualitative longitudinal study of students’ mind mapping the central concept of sociology in Hungary discovering recurring vagueness in their conceptualization of the field.