Tag Archives: Annual Meeting

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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City Spotlight: Montréal

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In our summer issues, the CUSS newsletter team solicits a short piece that introduces CUSS members to the location of the ASA annual meeting. This year, Jan Doering (Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto, jan.doering@utoronto.ca) generously agreed to write this year’s city spotlight. Thank you, Jan, for your introduction to Montréal! 

Montréal, a contradictory city

Montréal is unlike any other North American city, and I am not working up to the tired observation that Montréal is “so European.” What makes Montréal unique is its contradictory status as a multilingual and diverse city in Québec, a province that proudly insists on the dominance of the French language and Québécois identity. This contradictory status frequently pits Montréal against its province but also produces social conflict within the city, inflecting how debates unfold and how local issues are addressed (see also Carpentier 2022).

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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

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.

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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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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

Inequality and death in LA

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Pamela J. Prickett
University of Amsterdam
CUSS Newsletter Summer 2022, Vol. 35, No. 2

“I think of the view from a favorite arroyo in the late afternoon, the east slope still bathed in sunlight, the far slope already full of dark shade and lengthening shadows. A cool breeze, as one can look across the plains, out over miles of homes and trees, and hear the faraway hum of traffic on the high-ways and see the golden light filtering through the mist-laden air.”

-Carey McWilliams, Southern California: An Island on the Land

Much has changed about the views across Southern California in the time since McWilliams wrote these words in 1946, but the golden light remains. Sunsets in Southern California are unforgettable. Layers of tangerine, fuchsia, and violet light the sky. The sun may rise in the east, where ASA more often meets, but it sets in the west, and in this way SoCal does not disappoint. For those of you embarking on Los Angeles for this year’s annual meeting, do yourself a favor and try to make it to a hilltop or beachside to take in the cornucopia of colors at dusk (just don’t skip the CUSS reception on Sunday).

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