Dear SWS Members:
We are delighted to inform you about our plans for the SWS 2023 Summer Meeting, which will include two parts this year. First, we will have an in-person meeting in Philadelphia at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown from August 19 – 20, 2023. We are grateful that the American Sociological Association has provided this meeting space for us at the Philadelphia Marriott Downtown. Second, we will have a virtual Students’ Research Symposium to be held in September 2023.
Given the many competing events of the American Sociological Association’s Annual Meeting (August 17th-21st) and other sociological meetings during this period (e.g., ABS, SSSP, etc.), we decided to streamline the offerings of our Summer Meeting to enable our members to participate in all the phenomenal programming taking place in Philadelphia this August. This year, our in-person meeting will consist of several workshops that consider the “stages in the life cycle of a sociologist,” from milestones in the life of a graduate student through preparing for retirement, for example, as an academic or an applied sociologist.
We have asked our Committee Chairs to plan the workshops for the Summer Meeting in response to member needs that they have identified through their SWS Committee work. For this reason, we will not have an open call for submissions for the 2023 Summer Meeting.
If you have an idea for a workshop, we do encourage you to reach out to the appropriate Committee Chair in March and early April as we have asked for Committee Chairs to submit their ideas to us by May 1, 2023.
Please note that all participants who are facilitators/presenters must be able to attend the meeting in Philadelphia – in person. We will not have the resources in place for virtual participation at the 2023 Summer Meeting in Philadelphia.
In addition to featuring workshops, our Summer Meetings will include presentations from our 2022 SWS Feminist Activist Awardee, Georgiann Davis, and Honorary Feminist Sociologist, Sharon Harley, as well as our Reception and Awards Ceremony on Sunday evening, August 20. We will provide information about the virtual Students’ Research Symposium a bit later this spring.
We look forward to welcoming you to Philadelphia this August!
Sincerely,
Melanie Heath and Mary Osirim, SWS Co-Presidents
July 17, 2023 – Updated Message
Presidential Message From Melanie Heath and Mary Osirim – 2023 Summer Meeting
Welcome to our SWS 2023 Summer Meeting in Philadelphia! We are very excited that our Summer Meeting will be presented in two parts this year – first, our meeting at the Philadelphia Marriott from August 18th-20th and second, our virtual Students’ Symposium from October 12th-14th. We are grateful to the American Sociological Association (ASA) for providing us with the meeting space for our Summer Meeting.
We decided to try a new format for our Summer Meeting this year; our sessions will be offered as a series of workshops. Many of these workshops are focused on aspects of the theme, “Stages in the Life Cycle of a Sociologist: From Milestones in the Life of a Graduate Student Through Preparing for Retirement.” It is delightful to see the broad range of workshops offered by our SWS committees based on this theme and other critical issues for us as feminist sociologists including: “Resisting Together: Connecting the Dots Between Sexism and Racism in Higher Education,” “Office Hours: Teaching in the Time of Terror,” “Language Justice Struggles,” and “Developing a Space for Queer and Trans SWS Members.” These workshops will be held on August 19th and 20th. We also want to highlight a co-sponsored workshop with the ASA that will be offered on August 21st “Community Engagement and Social Justice Activism” by Retired Sociologists. We strongly encourage you to participate in as many of these insightful and inspiring workshops as your schedule permits!
Our conference begins on August 18th with several committee meetings and concludes on that day with our Business Meeting from 4-5:30 and our Student Caucus Meeting from 5:45-6:45. We are especially pleased to feature presentations this summer from two of our distinguished SWS awardees this year. Sharon Harley, our 2023 Honorary Feminist Sociologist will give a lecture, “Have More Brains on the Fingers of My Hand than…”: Nannie Helen Burroughs’s Courageous Crusade for Feminist Equality and Social Justice,” during lunch on August 19th from 12:30-1:45 pm. Our 2022 Feminist Activist Awardee, Georgiann Davis, will also give a lecture, “Visions of a Feminist Agenda,” during our Awards Reception on August 20th. We look forward to recognizing our outstanding dissertation awardees as well as those receiving Social Action Initiative awards at this event. Our warmest congratulations to you all!
During your stay in Philadelphia, we encourage you to take advantage of the many historical sites and cultural attractions the city has to offer! It is a very multicultural city with an increasing number of immigrant communities, particularly from Global South Regions. While in Center City Philadelphia, you may want to visit Chinatown, Reading Terminal Market and further south, the Italian Market, which along with the surrounding area, has become an important site of Latinx businesses and organizations. We also wish to highlight programming at Taller Puertorriqueño, “a community-based cultural organization that uses art to promote development within its community and the Latinx Diaspora and build bridges to the Greater Philadelphia region.” A ride to West Philadelphia will put you in the heart of University City, home to Drexel University and the University of Pennsylvania. Once there, you will enter an historic African American neighborhood and traveling along the Baltimore Avenue corridor will bring you to the heart of many African enterprises and community groups. Of course, Philadelphia has much to offer museum lovers: The Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Barnes Foundation, the African American Museum, and the Weitzman National Museum of American Jewish History among many others. And music and theater fans will enjoy such venues as the Kimmel Center, the Philadelphia Clef Club of Jazz and the Performing Arts, and the Mann Music Center.
As indicated above, the second part of our Summer Meeting is our Students’ Symposium, which we are looking forward to this October. We are very grateful for the many efforts of Alexis Grant-Panting and Pedrom Nasiri, our student representatives, who are planning this virtual symposium. Please look out for further information about this program in the coming weeks.
We would like to take this opportunity to offer our deepest thanks to our Executive Officer, Barret Katuna, and to our Administrative Officer, Natasha Santana. It is such a pleasure and a privilege to work with colleagues who continue to demonstrate such excellence and commitment to our organization! Their incredible hard work and continued support have really made planning our conferences such enjoyable and rewarding experiences! We also would like to express our sincerest thanks to the SWS Committees, who are offering such an exciting group of workshops!
Wishing you a wonderful Summer Meeting! Looking forward to seeing you in Philadelphia!
With our best wishes,
Melanie and Mary