Author Archives: Community & Urban Sociology

City Spotlight Chicago: Don’t Go

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Cover photo credit: Tonika Lewis Johnson; Cover design: David A. Gee
Images and excerpts reprinted with permission from Polity Press.

Maria Krysan, University of Illinois Chicago

Have you ever been told “Don’t Go” to Chicago’s south or west sides? And/or that they are dangerous? 

I have.

I moved to Chicago in 2000 to take an assistant professor job at the University of Illinois Chicago. It was the tightest rental market in recent memory, so rentals were expensive and hard to find, and I only had a weekend. After a failed attempt to find an apartment in the city, I went to the only logical next place if you are a student of residential segregation: Oak Park, a village on the western border of Chicago, famous among sociologists for its intentional pursuit of an integrated community in the midst of a notoriously segregated city (see The Oak Park Strategy by Carole Goodwin for an early history).

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2025 CUSS Award Winners

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Congratulations to our award winners and honorable mentions!

Jane Addams Article Award

Winner: Stephanie Ternullo. 2024. “Place-Based Partisanship: How Place (Re) produces Americans’ Partisan Attachments.” American Journal of Sociology, 130(2), 293-343.

Honorable Mention: Nima Dahir & Jackelyn Hwang. 2025. “Who Owns the Neighborhood? Ethnoracial Composition of Property Ownership and Neighborhood Trajectories in San Francisco”. City & Community, 24(1), 3-25.

Committee: Jan Doering and Christof Brandtner (co-chairs), Emily Walton, Luis Nuño, and Kasey Zapatka.

Book Award

Co-winners:

Randol Contreras (UC Riverside), The Marvelous Ones: Drugs, Gang Violence, and Resistance in East Los Angeles, University of California Press, 2024.

Stephanie Ternullo (Harvard), How the Heartland went Red: Why Local Forces Matter in an Age of Nationalized Politics, Princeton University Press, 2024.

Honorable mention:

Tony Cheng (Duke), The Policing Machine: Enforcement, Endorsements, and the Illusion of Public Input, University of Chicago Press, 2024.

Committee: Tanya Golash Boza (chair), Nate Ela, Jean Lin, Robert Durán, and Janina Selzer

Student Paper Award

Winner: Max Lubell (UT-Austin), “Do Schools Provide a Reprieve from Residential Neighborhood Violence?”

Committee:  Jeremy Levine (chair), Anna Fox, Lacee Satcher, and Jaleh Jalili

Early Career Award

Co-winners: Zawadi Rucks-Ahidiana (SUNY Albany) and Elizabeth Korver-Glenn (UNC)

Committee:  Elena Vesselinov (chair), Mervyn Horgan, Jerome Hodos, and Ian Kennedy

Publicly Engaged Research Award

Winner: Esther Sullivan (University of Colorado Denver)

Committee: Jeni Cross (chair), Brandon Alston, Derek Hyra, and Joanne Derouen

Interview w/ Jean Yen-Chun Lin

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Jean Yen-Chun Lin, an Associate Professor at California State University – East Bay, was co-winner of the 2024 Outstanding Book Award. Jean’s innovative research agenda centers on social movements, community organizations, and civic participation. We reached out to ask her to discuss her award-winning book, and we’re including her responses below. Thanks to Jean for participating in our interview series!

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Interview w/ Mario Luis Small

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The 2024 Robert and Helen Lynd Award for Lifetime Achievement in Community and Urban Sociology was awarded to Professor Mario Luis Small. Professor Small is the Chair and Quetelet Professor of Social Science in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University. His books include Villa Victoria: The Transformation of Social Capital in a Boston Barrio, Unanticipated Gains: Origins of Network Inequality in Everyday Life, Someone To Talk To: How Networks Matter in Practice and Qualitative Literacy: A Guide to Evaluating Ethnographic and Interview Research. Among many other awards and honors, Professor Small is a previous winner of both the CUSS awards for best article and best book.   

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Interview w/ Tanya Golash-Boza

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Before Gentrificaiton

Tanya Golash-Boza, a Professor at the University of California – Merced and the Executive Director of the University of California Washington Center, was co-winner of the 2024 Outstanding Book Award. Tanya’s innovative research agenda focuses on how racism intersects with capitalism and how the legal system creates and upholds inequities. We reached out to ask her to discuss her award-winning book, and we’re including her responses below. Thanks to Tanya for participating in our interview series!

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CUSS Award Nominations

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CUSS Outstanding Book Award

This award goes to the author(s) of the best book published in the previous 2 years (2023/24). Submit nominations using CUSS’s page for award submissions, here. Also, mail a hard copy of the book to each committee member (addresses will appear in the nomination form).

Book Award Committee:
Committee Chair: Tanya Golash Boza, tanyaboza@gmail.com
Robert Durán, rjduran@tamu.edu
Nate Ela, nate.ela@temple.edu
Janini Selzer, jselzer@hamilton.edu

Jane Addams Article Award

The Jane Addams Award goes to the author(s) of the best scholarly article in community and urban sociology published in the previous 2 years (2023/2024). Submit nominations using CUSS’s page for award submissions, here.

Jane Addams Article Award Committee:
Committee Co-Chair: Christof Brandtner, brandtner@em-lyon.com
Committee Co-Chair: Jan Doering, jan.doering@utoronto.ca
Luis Nuño, lnuno3@calstatela.edu
Emily Walton, Emily.C.Walton@dartmouth.edu
Kasey Zapatka, kaseyzapatka@berkeley.edu 

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. The award is granted to current graduate students for papers completed, published or forthcoming in 2023-2024 . Submit nominations using CUSS’s page for award submissions, here.

Community and Urban Sociology Graduate Student Paper Award Committee:
Committee Chair: Jeremy Levine, levinejr@umich.edu
Anna Fox, annafox@uchicago.edu
Whitney Gecker, whitney.gecker@mcla.edu
Jaleh Jalili, jj70@rice.edu
Lacee Satcher, satcher@bc.edu

CUSS Early Career Award

The Early Career Award recognizes members, who are within 10 years of their PhD,for interdisciplinary contributions, innovation and creativity, and mentorship. Submit nominations using CUSS’s page for award submissions, here.

CUSS Early Career Award Committee:
Committee Chair: Elena Vesselinov, elena.vesselinov@gmail.com
Jerome Hodos, jerome.hodos@fandm.edu
Mervyn Horgan, mhorgan@uoguelph.ca
Ian Kennedy, ikennedy@uic.edu

CUSS Publicly Engaged Research Award

This award recognizes community and urban sociologists who use their research to make significant and meaningful contributions to public debates, public policy, and/or communities. Submit nominations using CUSS’s page for award submissions, here.

CUSS Publicly Engaged Scholar Award Committee:
Committee Chair: Jeni Cross, jeni@innosphere.org
Brandon Alston, alston.113@osu.edu
JoAnne DeRouen, jo.derouen@louisiana.edu
Derek Hyra, hyra@american.edu

Click here to access Community and Urban Sociology’s page for award submissions. Nominations are open through March 1, 2025

2024 CUSS Sessions in Montreal

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1. Interdisciplinarity and Urban Sociology
Session Organizers: Xuefei Ren and Claire Herbert
Presider: TBD

Individual Presentations:
“Challenging the Ecology of Social Disorganization,” Matthew J. DelSesto.
“Reclaiming Spaces, Shifting Safety: A Difference-in-Differences Analysis of Brownfield Redevelopment and Crime Trends in Chicago,” Marisol Becerra and Agustina Laurito.
“The Sociology of Drywall: Labor, Monopoly Capitalism, and Environmental Hazards,” Albert S. Fu.
“‘Urban-Rural Politics’: The Social Dynamics of Spatial Planning in Urbanizing China,” Bingzhe Lu.

2. Racial Capitalism and the Financialization of the City
Session Organizer: Luana Pinto Coelho
Presider: Elizabeth Korver-Glenn

Individual Presentations:
“A Racial Capitalist Perspective on Debt Blocks,” Ian Kennedy, Kate Krushinski O’Neill, Ryan Paul Larson, Sarah K.S. Shannon, and Alexes Harris.
“Boomtown Landlording: Real Estate Speculation, Racialized Displacement and the Persistence of Small Landlords in Austin, Texas,” Andrew Ford Messamore.
“’It’s a Land Grab:’ Financialized Development Under Racial Capitalism,” Matthew Atwell.
“Reflecting on the Pandemic: Is Using Big Data Another Tool of Racial Capitalism?” Tabitha R. Ingle.
“Using the Master’s Tools: How CLTs’ Legal Models Enable and Constrain Their Work,” Victoria F. Sisk.

3. Suburbs, Small Towns, and Midsize Cities
Session Organizer: Kiara Wyndham-Douds
Presider: Thalia Tom

Individual Presentations:
“Brokering Time: The Impact of Circulating Experts in Suburban Housing Policy,” Jennifer Girouard.
“Bubble vs Real World: Narratives of Place and Privilege in Suburbia,” Whitney Gecker.
“Gentrification and The Social Disruption of Neighborhoods,” Payton Johnson.
“Huesos Ganadores: Domino Play and Parks as Sites of Latinx Pla(y)cemaking,” Teresa Irene Gonzales and Lilian Wynne Platten.
“New Immigrants in Local Politics,” Jonathan Acosta.

4. Urban Inequalities Across Canada
Session Organizer: Prentiss Dantzler
Presider: Jan Doering

Individual Presentations:
“Assessing diversity among urban mobile home residents in Canada,” Lora A. Phillips.
“A Tale of Two Cities: Heterogeneity in Racial/Ethnic Discrimination in the Canadian Housing Market,” S. Michael Gaddis.
“Subsidized housing: The solution to housing affordability issues?” Kate Hee Choi and Arabella Soave.
“Toronto’s Drug Policy Paradox: Harm Reduction Sites versus Drug Arrests in Toronto Neighborhoods (1992-2020),” Taylor Domingos.

5. Community and Urban Sociology Section Refereed Roundtables
Session Organizer: Thalia Tom

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