Chair’s Message | Community and Urban Sociology

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Chair’s Message: Summer 2023

Posted on August 15, 2023 by Steven Schmidt Leave a comment

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

Chair’s Message (May 2022)

Posted on May 19, 2022 by Community & Urban Sociology Leave a comment

Dear Colleagues,

I hope all is well as we turn in grades, restore some calm to our lives, and take time to enjoy the summer. We have awarded travel grants to five graduate students. We chose those who are on the market as a key criterion. Congratulations to Kurt Kuehne (UW, Madison), Melanie Brazzell (UC, Santa Barbara, Nathalie Rita (U Hawaii, Manoa), Andrew Messamore (UT, Austin), and Samuel Dinger (NYU). ASA notified me that our business meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, August 9th at 3:00 pm. This is not ideal for good attendance, so we will have the meeting then, but we will distribute the awards at the reception (Sunday, August 7th at 6:30 pm). Finally, please vote in the ASA election! May 27th is the last day to vote.

Warmly,

Rachael Woldoff

CUSS Chair

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Chair’s Message (Feb 2022)

Posted on February 3, 2022 by Community & Urban Sociology Leave a comment

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

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Chair’s Message (January 2022)

Posted on January 3, 2022 by Community & Urban Sociology Leave a comment

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)!

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Chair’s Message (December 2021)

Posted on December 2, 2021 by Community & Urban Sociology Leave a comment

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.

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Message from the Chair (November 2021)

Posted on November 3, 2021 by Community & Urban Sociology Leave a comment

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

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Message from the Chair (Oct. 2021)

Posted on October 2, 2021 by Community & Urban Sociology Leave a comment

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

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Message from New Section Chair

Posted on September 10, 2021 by Community & Urban Sociology Leave a comment

Dear CUSS members, I would like to begin my first Chair’s Message by expressing gratitude to Derek Hyra for his leadership during a difficult year and for assembling teams of people who created successful sessions and meetings at the online version of ASA’s annual meeting. I also want to thank our Secretary Treasurers, Mary J. Fischer and Yuki Kato. Special thanks to Yuki, who is staying on in that role for one more year after stepping in mid-term. They have made our section better and are helping me to transition into the role of Chair.

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