Submissions for CUSS Awards

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The Community and Urban Sociology Section invites nominations for the Section’s five awards. The deadline for submitting all nominations is March 1, 2024. For submissions please use the CUSS award portal: https://forms.gle/gyweYDXj3cCGiLxg9.

1. Robert E. Park Book Award: The book award goes to the author(s) of the best book published in the past 2 years (2022/2023).
Committee Co-Chairs: Elizabeth Korver-Glenn and Zachary Levenson.
Members: Candace Miller, Matthew McClesky, and Meaghan Stiman.

2. Jane Addams Article Award: The Jane Addams Award goes to authors of the best scholarly article in community and urban sociology published in the past 2 years (2022/2023).
Committee Co-Chairs: Prentiss Dantzler and Samantha Friedman.
Members: Shani Evans, Peter Rich, and Shelley Kimelberg.

3. Community and Urban Sociology Graduate Student Paper Award: The CUSS Student Paper award goes to the student author of the paper the committee regards as the best graduate student paper in community and urban sociology.
Committee Chair: H. Jacob Carlson
Members: Whitney Gecker, Tricia Lewis, and Brenden Beck

4. Robert and Helen Lynd Award for Lifetime Achievement: This award recognizes distinguished career achievement in community and urban sociology. No self-nominations for this award.
Committee Chair: Lance Freeman
Members: Brian Levy, Raoul Lievanos, and Margarethe Kusenbach.

5. Excellence in Teaching Award. This award recognizes members who are outstanding teachers in the field of community and urban sociology.
Committee Chair: Albert Fu
Members: Judith Halasz, Zawadi Rucks Ahidiana, and Colleen Wynn.

Community and Urban Sociology Section Virtual Mini-Conference

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Building Communities in Research and Practice

We are excited to announce a virtual mini-conference giving an opportunity to graduate and postdoctoral students to present their recent scholarly research, network with mentors and each other. There will be one session of concurrent paper presentations, where invited mentors will give feedback to the student presenters. Each paper session will have 4 student presenters at maximum and one invited mentor, who will serve as a presider/discussant. There will also be three professional workshops: (1) Dissertation Workshop, (2) Navigating the Job Market and (3) Publishing, Fellowships, and Grants Workshop.

Date: Friday, April 12, 2024, 12:00 pm – 4:45 pm EST (to accommodate attendees from different time zones).

Registration: Interested students should submit an extended abstract of two pages, with the following clearly marked sections: (1) Introduction to the topic; (2) Hypotheses/Research Questions; (3) Methodology; and (4) Preliminary Results.

Registration portal: https://forms.gle/mckPVtB77Q7zugWLA

Deadline for registration: February 26, 2024.

Eligibility: This is a free event for CUSS members, who are graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. The event is open to all others on the condition that if an abstract is accepted for presentation, they become section members.

Contact: CUSS.Mini.Conference@gmail.com.

Preliminary Schedule (EST time zone):
12:00 – 12:15 pm, Welcome, introduction of the section
12:15 – 1:15 pm, Concurrent Paper Sessions (4 papers per session, 1 mentor)
1:15 – 1:45 pm, Invited mentors’ feedback
1:45 – 2:00 pm, Break
2:00 – 3:00 pm, Concurrent workshops (presentations by invited speakers with Q&A)
A. Dissertation workshop (open to first and second year graduate students)
B. Finding a job workshop (third and higher years graduate students, post-doctoral students)
3:00 – 3:15 pm, Break
3:15 – 4:15 pm, Publishing, fellowships, and grants workshop (presentations by invited speakers with Q&A)
4:15 – 4:45 pm, Open forum, feedback about the day, real-time surveys, and other interactive activities.

Chair’s Message: Summer 2023

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Dear CUSS Members,

I hope everyone is enjoying summer.  I am looking forward to seeing many of you at our meetings in Philadelphia this week.  We have been busily planning our section events, starting with our reception which will take place on Thursday evening at the Post.   We have an exciting slate of section sessions that start the next morning with “Reimagining Urban and Community Sociology through Data Science”, followed by “Education and Urban Inequality”, “Climate Change, Urban Inequality, and the Future of Cities”, and “Critical Approaches to the Study of Policing of Urban Spaces”.   Our roundtable sessions cover the following themes: Contesting Urban Governance, Education in the Urban Context, Framing Diversity and Contestation, Gentrification, Getting Housed, Losing Shelter, Housing, Planning, and Politics, Neighboring and Community, Police and Spatial Surveillance, Race and Place, Urban Business and Property, and Urban Theory.  I would like to thank the session organizers for putting together a stellar group of papers.  Our business meeting will immediately follow the roundtables and will include our awards presentations. 

This has been a busy year for CUSS.  Many of the discussions that have taken place during my term have centered on ways to improve the section to foster broader involvement and inclusivity, particularly in both elected and volunteer leadership roles.  One of the most visible steps that has been taken towards this end has been in revamping our awards process, including in the constitution of committees, awards submissions, and evaluations.  We now have a portal for awards submissions that allows collects the same information from all applicants, as well as requiring text based only submission of articles aimed at mitigating some sources of potential bias in the review process.  We are open to suggestions about how to improve these processes moving forward.    

As my term concludes in August, I wanted to express how much of a pleasure it has been to serve CUSS as your chair. I am excited to welcome in the new leadership and opportunities to contribute to the continued growth and success of our section.

Best,

Mary J. Fischer

Practitioner Spotlight: Dr. Esther Hio-Tong Castillo

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Dr. Esther Hio-Tong Castillo is the Director of Racial Equity, Storytelling, and Community Impact for the City of Philadelphia. Previously, she served as the Programs Manager for the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology from Temple University in 2017. Benny Witkovsky interviewed Dr. Castillo about her work in Philadelphia earlier this spring. Thanks for speaking with us! 

Tell me about the work you have done in Philadelphia with the Asian community.

The first time that I worked directly with the Asian community in Philadelphia was when I volunteered as a Census trainer in Chinatown. In late 2019, the City of Philadelphia was recruiting multilingual trainers to ensure that everyone filled out the census, including immigrants and refugees. At that time, I gave a training presentation in Cantonese to about 100 older residents in Chinatown. To my surprise, they were very enthusiastic about filling out the census. Through this experience, I connected with the Philadelphia Chinatown Development Corporation (PCDC), my former employer. They asked me if I would be willing to lead a program that aims to promote mental health and wellness in the Chinese immigrant community because they just received a grant from the Scattergood Foundation. I said yes. 

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City Spotlight: Landlord Strategies for Avoiding Evictions in Philadelphia

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By Melody L. Boyd (SUNY Brockport) and John Balzarini (Delaware State University)

If it’s been a while since you’ve been to Philadelphia, you’ll notice some shimmering additions to the skyline when you arrive for ASA 2023. You’ll likely need to reroute a block or two to navigate around scaffolding and closed streets as you head to dinner after a day of conferencing. You may want to bring a pair of ear plugs to minimize the construction noise as you move around the city. While Gritty was unveiled in 2018 as the Flyers mascot, the city has gotten quite a bit shinier and new in recent years. Of course, as sociologists we know that shiny and new—which on the surface may seem attractive—actually corresponds with increased inequality as competition for housing intensifies. In the context of these changes throughout the city we conducted research looking at the attitudes, perspectives, and experiences of one of Philadelphia’s most important housing providers—landlords. In this article, we highlight some of our findings from this research, focusing on how landlords navigate evictions amidst an increasingly hot Philly housing market.

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2023 Section Award Winners

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Congratulations to our 2023 award winners, and sincere thanks to the award committees. Award recipients will be honored at our Section Business Meeting at the ASA Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.

Robert E. Park Book Award

Co-Winner: Elizabeth Korver-Glenn, Washington University in St. Louis

Korver-Glenn, Elizabeth. 2021. Race Brokers: Housing Markets and Segregation in 21st Century Urban America. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Co-Winner: Zachary Levenson, University of North Carolina, Greensboro

Levenson, Zachary. 2022. Delivery as Dispossession: Land Occupation and Eviction in the Postapartheid City. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Honorable Mention: Robin Bartram, Tulane University

Bartram, Robin. 2022. Stacked Decks: Building Inspectors and the Reproduction of Urban Inequality. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

· Committee chairs: Xuefei Ren (Michigan State) & Jessica Simes (Boston University)

· Michael Gaddis (UCLA/ NWEA)

· Allen Hyde (Georgia Tech)

· Jinwon Kim (City Tech-CUNY)

Jane Addams Article Award*

Winner: Prentiss Dantzler, University of Toronto

Dantzler, Prentiss A. 2021. “The Urban Process Under Racial Capitalism: Race, Anti-Blackness, and Capital Accumulation.” Journal of Race, Ethnicity and the City 2(2): 113-134.

· Committee chairs: Junia Howell (UI-Chicago) & Elizabeth Korver-Glenn (WashU)

· Denia Garcia (UW-Madison)

· Kristin Perkins (Georgetown)

· Nicole Trujillo-Pagán (Wayne State)

*During the review process, committee members abstained from votes pertaining to colleagues or co-authors.

Best Student Paper Award

Winner: Reed T. DeAngelis, UNC-Chapel Hill

DeAngelis, Reed T. 2022. “Moving on Up? Neighborhood Status and Racism-Related Distress among Black Americans.” Social Forces 100(4): 1503–32.

Honorable mention: Luis Flores, University of Michigan

Flores, Luis. 2022. “Zoning as a Labor Market Regulation.”

· Committee chair: Rahim Kurwa (UIC)

· Bryant Crubaugh (Pepperdine)

· CalvinJohn Smiley (Hunter-CUNY)

· Kiara Wyndham-Douds (WashU)

Publicly Engaged Scholar Award

Winner: Derek Hyra, American University

· Committee chair: Patricia Snell Herzog (Indiana)

· Max Lubell (UT-Austin)

· Chandra Ward (UT-Chattanooga)

· Simón Weffer (Northern Illinois U)

Robert and Helen Lynd Lifetime Achievement Award

Winner: Lance Freeman, University of Pennsylvania

· Committee chair: John Gilderbloom (U of Louisville)

· Eileen Avery (U of Missouri)

· Watoii Rabii (Oakland U)

· Emily Sandusky (Cornell)

Mentoring at ASA 2023

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The CUSS mentorship committee is organizing small-group mentoring meetings at the 2023 ASA conference. The meetings will be a chance for established and emerging scholars to meet and discuss research, career advice, work-life balance, and more. If you are interested in participating—as a mentor or a mentee—please complete this survey. We especially encourage the participation of established scholars. Mentoring is rewarding for all involved and helps support our section’s vibrant community. 

Thanks so much,

Brenden Beck, Emily Walton, and Jennifer Garfield-Abrams

Seeking Philly Newsletter Pieces

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Source https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Philadelphia_cityscape_BW_20150328.jpg

Does your scholarship or activism take place in Philadelphia? If so, the CUSS Newsletter Committee wants to feature your work in our next newsletter! Anyone interested in submitting a feature-length article (approximately 1,000-2,000 words) should contact Co-Editors Lora Phillips (lora.phillips@asu.edu) and Steven Schmidt (seschmid@uci.edu) by May 15 with a short (1-5 sentence) description of your proposed article. Final submissions will be due by July 1 in order to ensure inclusion in the summer newsletter.

Beyond Black Marginality: Expanding Our View of Black People & Places

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As part of our virtual panel series, City & Community is excited to host “Beyond Black Marginality: Expanding Our View of Black People & Places” on Monday, May 1, at 5:00PM (ET). Aimed at junior scholars (but inclusive of all), this panel series features topics within the journal’s scope in which more established scholars share their experiences and intellectual journeys with the intention of both guidance and information. See below for a description and information. 

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