Bookmarks (94)

Tara Gonsalves, “Elaborating Embodied Boundaries: Medical Expertise and (Trans)Gender Classification,” American Journal of Sociology, 2024 A small pile of piles next to a stack of money, by Kaboompics.com is licensed under Pexels License Over the past two decades, insurance coverage for gender affirming healthcare has rapidly expanded. Gender affirming care includes surgical, hormonal, or other care that enables […]

New & Noteworthy Jordyn Wald’s latest StoryMap leverages S. Ericson’s piece on conspiracy theories, summarizing research on how belief in hidden powers offers comfort amid uncertainty. The piece traces the rise of conspiratorial thinking across social classes, examines how distrust in institutions fuels belief, and highlights the internet’s role in transforming “stigmatized knowledge” into shared […]

Your most recent book, Misrepresentation in Silence in United States History Textbooks, demonstrates the distortion of history in American textbooks. What are the implications or effects of misrepresentation? Dr. Gellman: Misrepresentation continues to allow certain kinds of stories to be told about groups of people in ways that maintain and perpetuate dominant social hierarchies. For […]

Check out this TSP article, which discusses how conversations around race have changed in online spaces, focusing on colorblind nationalism.

In this episode, Dr. Daniel Silver, Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto Scarborough and author of Scenescapes: how qualities of place shape social life (2020), joins us to discuss and read from Talcott Parsons’ On Institutions and Social Evolution, edited by Leon H. Mayhew. In our conversation, Dan helps me understand the logic […]

In February 2024, the New York Times published a two-part series on the results of a survey of men who are fans of women’s soccer. The survey addressed how and why men became fans of women’s soccer, the relationship between their fandom of men and women’s sport, and how they perceived and participated in fan […]

Jordyn is a first year PhD student in the Sociology Department at the University of Minnesota. Her interests lie on the perpetuation of gender inequality across intersecting dimensions of culture, media, race, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, and family.

I’ve recently reimagined an introductory sociology course into a digital sociology course that introduces students to social science research methods and foundational sociological concepts. In this class, students conduct a digital auto-ethnography of their social media feeds on platforms like Instagram and TikTok and use theories like C. Wright Mills’ “sociological imagination” to better understand […]

This article by García-Albacete and Hoskins (2024) examines the effect of higher education on political self-efficacy. The article suggests that some teaching methods may widen the gender gap in political self-efficacy.

New & Noteworthy From the Archives More from our Partners & Community Pages Council on Contemporary Families: Center or Holocaust and Genocide Studies:

Prof. dr. Sarah Cramsey is the Special Chair for Central European Studies at Leiden University, an Assistant Professor of Judaism & Diaspora Studies and Director of the Austria Centre Leiden. From 2025-2030, she will be the Principal Investigator of “A Century of Care: Invisible Work and Early Childcare in central and eastern Europe, 1905-2004” or CARECENTURY, a project […]

Marcus A. Brooks, “Online discourse in the post- “new racism” era?: Toward a theory of colorblind nationalism,” Sociology Compass, 2024 Three social media message bubbles with blurred graphics. Image by author, Jordyn Wald. Racist talk among conservatives has long been divided by scholars into two main types: forms of which are “overt” (open and direct) […]

TSP Board members discuss a recent episode of Normal Gossip. Kelsey McKinney (Author and Journalist) discusses her new book, You Didn’t Hear This From Me, and how she thinks about the functions of gossip with some inspiration from sociology.

Did you know that the American Sociological Review has a podcast? See this link to get access to various episodes that you can use in your courses.

New & Noteworthy From the Archives More from our Partners & Community Pages Council on Contemporary Families

Are you teaching a course on health care? This video from ASA’s video series features Paul Starr of Princeton University as he discusses how the healthcare industry has changed over time and why it’s important.

A young woman sitting on her couch with her laptop, drinking coffee alone.  Image by Vlada Karpovich from Pexels is licensed under Pexels license. Stories of young people self-isolating frequent national headlines, with The Atlantic, NPR, Fox, The New York Times and others shedding light on this growing pattern. Loneliness, an inherent source of human […]

This piece, published in The Chronicle of Higher Education, offers instructors various ideas for sparking joy and fostering connection in the classroom. Many of these activities can even be adapted for online classes.

New & Noteworthy This week’s Clippings includes: Jonathan Rauch wrote in The Atlantic on how Trump’s administration embraces “patrimonialism,” a loyalty-based governing style that breeds corruption. Karyn Vilbig explained in The Conversation how improved views of Black Americans from 2012 to 2020 drove increased support for social welfare programs. The ASA and AFT sued over […]

Jill E Yavorsky, Lisa A Keister, Yue Qian, and Sarah Thébaud, “Separate Spheres: The Gender Division of Labor in the Financial Elite,” Social Forces, 2023 A father and his three children wearing surfing wetsuits, running on a beach. Photo by Kampus Production under Pexels license. Gendered work and family patterns among couples in the financial […]

Check out this New York Times article, which details some things state and local governments can do to lower the cost of living while also combatting climate change.

New & Noteworthy This week’s Clippings includes: Robert Putnam discussed the link between social isolation and populism on PBS News Hour, highlighting how civic engagement can drive moral revival. Florence Becot appeared on The FarmHouse podcast to examine the invisible labor of women in agriculture, including the expectation of raising children while performing farm work. […]

This Contexts piece highlights the many sides of Michael Burawoy and invites us to remember his work as a teacher, scholar, mentor, activist, and more.

Teaching social theory is just plain fun. For me, it’s an opportunity to see our world in a multidimensional way. Who needs a comic book multiverse when you can look at social phenomena through different perspectives? Inspired by sociologist Arthur Stinchcombe, one of my favorite things to prompt theory students with is to present them […]

Catherine Burgess and Jennifer Carlson, “The roots of charity: How Gendered Racialization Shapes Crowdfunding for Women and Girls Murdered by Gun Violence,” Gender & Society, 2024 A woman holding a white box saying “Donate” on it, by Liza Summer is licensed under Pexels License. Gun violence remains a critical public health crisis, causing measurable and immeasurable loss to families […]

TSP Board members Jordyn Wald, Emma Goldstein, Mason Jones discuss Elizabeth Bruch and Amie Gordon recent coverage in The Pulse on “Revel“, a dating app for students at the University of Michigan that doubles as a research tool to uncover college dating patterns. Listen on Spotify

This piece by Merrill 2021, offers insight on some pedagogical tools instructors can use when teaching difficult or contentious topics.

And so begins our end. With this issue we step forward into the final year of our editorship of Contexts, embodying in a personal way the theme of “heartbreak and hope” that animates these pages. We recognize that our letter finds you at a time when fear and fury, shock and struggle saturate our lives, […]

from the editors in brief: “Cash and Control,” Colter J. Uscola. “Place-Based Politics,” Parker Muzzerall. “New Labor Model, Same Old Problems,” Parker Muzzerall. “All Fun and Games?” Colter J.  Uscola. “Emirati Women’s Hidden Paychecks,” Elena G. van Stee. “Between a Rock and a Landlord,” Parker Muzzerall. “Friendship Therapy,” Parker Muzzerall. “Seeking Help, Seeking Dignity,” Elena […]

New & Noteworthy This week’s Clippings includes: Zeynep Tufekci comments on the Trump administration’s NIH funding cuts, warning they endanger America’s biomedical research infrastructure. Elizabeth Bruch and Amie Gordon launched Revel, a University of Michigan dating app that doubles as a research tool to study relationship dynamics. Meanwhile, Ruby Lai examined Hong Kong’s subdivided flats, Musa Al-Gharbi […]

“Dr Burawoy was one of the few senior sociologists who stood unequivocally against the genocide. He did so loudly and eloquently, never declining a request to speak or write on the matter. What an absolute gem of a human.” – Eman Abdelhadi, posted on X Professor Michael Burawoy, our beloved colleague, mentor, and friend, passed […]

Ethan Kutlu, “Now You See Me, Now You Mishear Me: Raciolinguistic accounts of speech perception in different English varieties,” Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, 2023 Speech is not just about what we hear. Listeners make judgments about how they think people will talk using visual cues to make assumptions about a person’s age, gender […]

With the explosion of genetic ancestry testing, more and more Americans are connecting with new parts of their ethno-racial identities. But does a White suburban New Yorker finding out they are 4% Cherokee make them Indigenous? If they believe it does, what are the implications for our everyday understandings of racial identity? A new article […]

Baby Tooth Survey Pledge Card, Missouri Encyclopediahttps://missouriencyclopedia.org/groupsorganizations/baby-tooth-survey-st-louis  Nuclear fallout from nuclear testing 1951-1962Source: Originally from Under the Cloud: The Decades of Nuclear Testing by Richard Miller, and featured in Silent Fallout  From 1959-1970, the communities of Saint Louis, Missouri were tasked with a unique mission: sending in the teeth of children to a newly formed initiative called the […]

New & Noteworthy This week’s Clippings by Mallory Harrington includes Raka Ray and Geoffrey Pleyers’ reflections on the passing of Michael Burawoy, a towering figure in public sociology whose work shaped labor studies, ethnographic methods, and the discipline as a whole. Max Besbris commented on the rapid rebuilding of the Palisades after California’s wildfires, noting that wealthy […]

In a recent New York Times article, journalist Eli Tan shared his experiences using AI clones to improve his dating life. After programming these clones with information about his hobbies and mannerisms, he tasked them with evaluating potential matches. The clones interacted with other dating platform users—sometimes real people, sometimes other AI clones—through chat messages […]

When was the last time you heard someone say they wanted sex that was just “good”? Ever heard anyone wax nostalgic about an “average” sexual experience they had? Probably not. Whether scrolling through social media, thumbing through glossy magazine pages, or even in late-night chats with friends, the talk is always about making sex great. […]

Sarah Lageson and Robert Stewart, “The problem with criminal records: Discrepancies between state reports and private-sector background checks,” Criminology, 2024 Someone having their finger printed, being pressed down by another hand. Image by cottonbro studio under Pexels license. A background check can make or break someone’s future. Every day, people are denied jobs, housing, and […]

Jordyn is a first year PhD student in the Sociology Department at the University of Minnesota. Her interests lie on the perpetuation of gender inequality across intersecting dimensions of culture, media, race, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, and family.

Are you interested in discussing ethics in one of your sociology courses? This resource from ASA provides over a hundred case studies that can help facilitate discussion!

New & Noteworthy This week’s Clippings by Mallory Harrington includes Swiss sociologist and mental health advocate Jennifer Walter’s Threads post on the Trump administration’s “shock doctrine” to cognitively overwhelm citizens; Tonika Lewis Johnson and Maria Krysan’s new book, Don’t Go: Stories of Segregation and How to Disrupt It, highlighting how warnings to avoid Chicago’s South […]

It is late January 2025 and my eyes are still affixed to the websites and reels and headlines about the Los Angeles fires. A lot of my family and friends live there. I have spent the last two weeks texting people I know to see if they’re okay and following their temporary dislocation and participation […]

As an academic, I am driven by the following commitments: liberatory knowledge, sharing power, and critical application. These values inform my teaching and relationship building with students. In the spring of 2023, as a PhD student, I was approached with the opportunity to teach sociological theory at a private Catholic university. I was both excited […]