Recent Member Publications (Fall 2021 – Winter 2022)
Below are Community and Urban Sociology Section publications submitted by section members between Fall 2021 – Winter 2022.
Read moreCommunity & Urban Sociology
Interview w/ George Greenidge Publicly Engaged Scholar Award Winner
CUSS Newsletter, Winter 2022, Vol. 35, No. 1
George (Chip) Greenidge, Jr., a Ph.D. Candidate at Georgia State University, was the winner of the 2021 Publicly Engaged Scholar Award. George is a scholar-activist whose commitments span non-profit work, government service, philanthropy, and education. Recently, he was President of the Boston Empowerment Zone, a federally funded HUD initiative aimed at economic investment in U.S. urban neighborhoods, and the Founder and Executive Director of the National Black College Alliance, Inc., a nonprofit focused on providing alumni mentors to college and high school students. Currently, George is also the Founder and Director of the Greatest MINDS, an organization which aims to promote public discourse, citizenship and inclusive democracy. He is also a Visiting Democracy Fellow at the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation at Harvard Kennedy School. Benny Witkovsky and Andrew Messamore reached out to George to discuss his career. Thanks to George for agreeing to participate in our interview!
Read moreChair’s Message (Feb 2022)
CUSS Newsletter, Winter 2022, Vol. 35, No. 1
Dear CUSS members,
Welcome to February 2022! I hope you are receiving this message safe or recovered from Omicron. My daughter contracted the variant (fully vaccinated and with few symptoms). It was distressing, but the rest of us managed not to get it. This has been a hard start to the year for many of us, but we are grateful that the surge is declining in many places.
The ASA submissions deadline has been extended but is approaching (February 16). Please consider submitting your work to our section sessions. Don’t forget to nominate yourself and colleagues for CUSS awards, as well!
Last month I mentioned that Council voted to offer small one-time travel grants to active CUSS student members who are presenting at any panel or roundtable at the 2022 Los Angeles conference. We will offer up to five awards of $300. If the conference is virtual, we will offer to cover the student registration fee. Either way, we will give priority to students with no travel funds. The application deadline is March 15, 2022. I will send more details in March.
Finally, I wanted to share that I attended an ASA Section Chairs Meeting recently. We discussed the struggles of our members, challenges to sections, and strategies for staying connected and helping our members. I want CUSS members to know that we appreciate that this is a difficult time to pay for and attend a conference in Los Angeles. We know that institutions have cut travel funds and that faculty from a range of institutions are spread very thin and feel burnt out. I hope there will be a way for all of us can participate in the conference this summer. I appreciate all the hard work of our members. You have been of great service to your students, organizations, communities, and families and deserve recognition.
Warmly,
Rachael Woldoff
Section Chair
Section members in ASA Footnotes
Several section members are featured in the latest issue of ASA Footnotes which looks at Sociology and the Potential of Community-Engaged Scholarship. See below!
Read moreChair’s Message (January 2022)
Dear Friends,
Happy New Year, and welcome to the January 2022 CUSS Chair’s message.
What a time to be studying the importance of place and community! As we begin the new year, please spread the word about our section to people who seem interested in places and communities and who may not realize that CUSS is a home for them within ASA. CUSS membership was 600 in 2019, 552 in 2020, and 640 in 2021. Let’s reach out to our people so that we can connect them to our section (and have as many paper sessions as possible).
Personally, I am starting 2022 with an intention to serve my students, colleagues, and community and to consistently maintain that spirit through the year by keeping my heart and mind open to possibilities. I look forward to working with all of you to help you continue your passion for research, teaching, service, and activism as we collectively deal with the uncertainty and anxiety of the times. I am eager for us to connect and share how the pandemic has affected our approaches to community and urban sociology.
I must take this opportunity to invite you to submit a paper to the 2022 ASA conference. The portal is open for submissions, and the deadline is 11:59 PM on February 9, 2022. Let’s show up (if we can, of course)!
Read moreChair’s Message (December 2021)
Dear CUSS Members,
Happy Holidays! Welcome to the December Chair’s message.
In terms of CUSS membership, we have 640 members (174 student members and 431 regular members). Please encourage students and colleagues to join!
Please consider submitting a paper to the upcoming ASA conference. The 2022 Annual Meeting portal is open for submissions. The deadline to submit is February 9, 2022, at 11:59PM.
To better support our student CUSS members at this difficult time, Council voted to provide a one-time travel grant to CUSS student members whose papers are accepted for presentation to any session or roundtable. Applicants must be active members of the section, but they do not need to present on a section session or roundtable. We will offer up to five awards of $300 to offset travel costs. If the conference is virtual, we will pay the student registration fee. We will prioritize students without access to other travel funds. The application deadline will be March 15, 2022. We are still finalizing details and will send additional information on the application process.
We will have five open panels and a roundtable session. Below, please find the panel topics, descriptions, and organizers for this year’s CUSS Sessions. Please contact the organizers or Theo Greene (tgreene@bowdoin.edu) with questions.
Read moreCUSS 2022 Meeting Sessions
Dear CUSS Members:
The ASA Annual Meeting submission portal is now open for the 2022 meetings in Los Angeles (deadline for submissions: February 9). Please consider submitting your papers to CUSS Section sessions! This year we will have five open panels (plus a roundtable session). Below, please find the panels topics, descriptions, and organizers for this year’s CUSS Sessions. You are welcome to contact the organizers or me (tgreene@bowdoin.edu) with questions about the panel.
Read moreMessage from the Chair (November 2021)
Dear CUSS Members,
Welcome to my November Chair’s message. I am excited to report that many graduate students and junior faculty have expressed great interest in meeting new people and helping to organize the 2022 ASA conference. As we work hard to prepare for it, I would like to remind you to submit a paper to the conference. I know it’s hard to picture attending a conference again, but I hope you will see this as an opportunity to develop some ideas and share them
with us!
Also, I want to let you know that the Membership Committee is planning a preconference. Ryan Center and Juan Martinez will share more on that later, as they gather information on our last preconference and consider formats for
the next one.
Finally, many of us may not know that CUSS has an archive that Lyn Lofland compiled. Materials span the period from the early 1970s through roughly 2010 and are housed in the Special Collections Library at Penn State. Barry Lee at
Penn State brought the status of the archive to my attention, so Council will soon meet with him to discuss plans for preserving it. I will keep you posted on this.
Warmly,
Rachael A. Woldoff,
Chair, Community and Urban Sociology Section
Professor, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, West Virginia University
Excellence in Teaching in Community & Urban Sociology Award
The Community and Urban Sociology Section invites nominations to the inaugural Excellence in Teaching in Community and Urban Sociology award, which will be given in alternating years. This award recognizes members who are outstanding teachers in the field. Nominations should include a 750 word statement that addresses: (1) the nominee’s pedagogy or approach to teaching, (2) how the nominee demonstrates and understands excellence in teaching and (3) how the nominee supports students and student-faculty interactions in community and urban sociology. Submissions should also include one piece of evidence that demonstrates teaching excellence. This can include but is not limited to: a letter from a student, a letter from a colleague, a letter from a community partner, course syllabus, publication (including TRAILS), or a teaching award. We particularly encourage nominations from people who have a demonstrated commitment to teaching students from marginalized communities, community colleges, Historically Black Colleges and Universities, Hispanic Serving Institutions, Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institutions, among others. Nominations (including self-nominations) should be sent to cussteachingaward@gmail.com no later than March 1, 2022.
Message from the Chair (Oct. 2021)
Welcome to October 2021!
This is my second Chair’s message, and we have accomplished a great deal in a short time. I am so proud of the work of Council members, committee members, and volunteers during this challenging time. I am especially thankful to the outgoing and current members of the Publications Committee for helping to revise the bylaws to comply with ASA’s policies. The changes passed in council and will be on the ballot next year. I am also grateful to the Reception Committee and Jan Lin (Chair) for volunteering to plan this event, which will bring us back together in person again. We increased the budget this year to make sure we find a space in Los Angeles that will be safe and festive. I look forward to reconnecting and hearing about your work and lives from the past two years and honoring our awards winners.
I also want to let you know that Council voted to donate $2,500 to the ASA Minority Fellowship Program (MFP), and we also voted to add this to the budget as a line item in coming years so that giving will be ongoing. This is very important as giving varies by year; some sections do not give at all, some give a little (under a thousand), and some give a lot (several thousand). The MFP needs funds to pay fellows and to pay them better, and I am proud that our section wants to prioritize this.
Finally, I want to thank those serving on the Membership Committee, the Awards Committees, and those helping to organize sessions and put together the election slate. We have invited everyone to participate in the process if they have time. The sessions look fresh and exciting, and we have an extra session in 2022!
Warmly,
Rachael A. Woldoff,
Chair, Community and Urban Sociology Section
Professor, Department of Sociology & Anthropology, West Virginia University
Community and Urban Sociology 