Colloquia

What are the political consequences, at the grassroots level, of working-class decline? Based on multi-year ethnographic fieldwork on the Unemployed Workers' Movement in Argentina, this presentation provides a case study of how workers affected by job loss protect their traditional forms of life by joining progressive community organizations. Life history interviews and participant observation show that a key appeal of this movement is the…

“Proletarian Lives: Ideas, Routines, and Activism in a Poor People’s Movement”
How doctors police mistakes among themselves varies. Physicians support, tolerate, avoid, ridicule, confront, report, and banish colleagues for errors. What explains this variation? An established theory of social control and a growing literature on stratification in medical education suggest that the vertical direction of medical cases may partially account for the different social control strategies physicians use to manage mistakes. Drawing…

“Vertical Direction and the Social Control of Medical Mistakes”
How will an external threat from Asia affect racial relations in the United States? While Americans' sense of shared adversity during the COVID-19 pandemic has the potential to unite people across racial and national lines, research also suggests that perception of threat increases racially biased behaviors and may have spillover effects on intergroup relations. Using an experiment that combines behavioral game and survey methods (N = 1,987), we…

“Assessing the Spillover Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Intergroup Relations”
Colorism, the practice whereby light skin is privileged over dark, has been widely acknowledged and studied among African Americans and Latinx populations. Though this research has grown exponentially in recent decades, less attention has been given to Asian Americans, for whom colorism is equally pervasive and deeply entrenched. This talk focuses on colorism among Asian American women and the twin pressures for light skin stemming from (1) the…

"Fair and Lovely: Colorism and Asian American Women"
From California to China, self-described “greening” efforts claiming to address inequality and the climate crisis proliferate. But why are such projects—undertaken in the name of ecological sustainability and climate resilience as well as quality of life—being carried out in such a wide range of places with very different histories, ecologies, and cultural repertoires for urban life? Based on a study of a century of greening in Germany’s Ruhr…

"The Greening Imaginary: Urbanized Nature from Garden Cities to Climate Justice"
We know remarkably little about the varying meanings justice-involved populations assign to their employment experiences, and how those meanings intersect with varying criminal involvement over time. Some perspectives assume that employment and crime are alternative choices that don’t easily co-exist, particularly as the individual moves down a pathway towards desistance. Other scholars view employment and income-generating crime as more-or-less…

"Meanings of Employment in the Lives of the Formerly Incarcerated"
In this presentation, we will discuss the troubled past (and present) of fat stigma. We will consider the role of racism and sexism in its creation and perpetuation throughout the Western world. The presentation will highlight the role of the medical field in its more recent propagation. Sabrina Strings, Ph.D. is Associate Professor of Sociology and Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of California, Irvine. Sabrina has been featured in dozens…

"Fatphobia as Misogynoir: Gender, Race, and Weight Stigma"
This talk offers an historical sociology of militarized policing in the US and Britain, where the model of our current “civil police” was born. It explores the deep historical roots of militarized policing, its causes, and its inextricable connections with empire abroad and racial dynamics at home. Julian Go is Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago, where he is also a member of the Committee on International Relations, a Faculty…

"Militarizing the Police: Empire and the Global Color Line"
Thirty years into a purported culture war, evidence for the ideological polarization of popular tastes and lifestyles remains inconclusive. And yet, the degree to which ideological antipathy has spilled over into otherwise mundane realms of social life is central not only for key sociological insights about societal cohesion, but also for the existence of a functioning democratic society. Relying on original survey data on political ideology and…

"The Polarization of American Popular Culture: Scope and Mechanisms"
In the U.S., those who identify as Afro-Latinx, do so at the intersection of a Latinx community that often rejects them and an African American community that often does not understand them. I examine the relationship between Afro-Latinx identity and the #BlackLivesMatter movement via social media. By employing, a combination of Twitter analysis and in-depth interviews with social media users, I provide insight into how Afro-Latinxs understand…

"Mestizaje Undone: A Qualitative Social Media Analysis of Afro-Latinx Identity & Social Movements"
Subscribe to Colloquia

Support Us

We appreciate your financial support. Your gift is important to us and helps support critical opportunities for students and faculty alike, including lectures, travel support, and any number of educational events that augment the classroom experience. Click here to learn more about giving.

Every dollar given has a direct impact upon our students and faculty.