SWS Virtual Student and Junior Community Scholar Symposium (SJCSS)
October 12-14, 2023
Cost: Free to SWS members; voluntary registration fee of $20 for non-members of SWS***

View the Full Program Here

Registration Form

Programming Highlights: 

Thursday, October 12, 2023

11:30 am – 12:45 pm EDT – Moving Towards a Queer Future Within the Bounds of the Classroom 

At a time when equity-focused instruction is under attack, we explore how our classrooms can offer an opportunity to disrupt the ruling relations of academic institutions that are rooted in systemic oppression through embracing feminist pedagogies, centering empathy in course instruction, and critically reflecting on how instructors’ identities and ways of knowing can be sources of power and community building in the classroom. In this panel, we would think through how power and practice within the academy interact with our work to reimagine the classroom as a place of equity, a site for building queer utopias.

Friday, October 13, 2023

1:30 pm EDT – 2:45 pm EDT – SWS Town Hall Meeting

Hosted by SWS Co-Presidents, Mary Osirim and Melanie Heath 

Please join us for this SWS Town Hall Meeting where we will first have a presentation of SWS’ financial position before we discuss SWS’ efforts to work toward diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging in all of our programming. We initiated this dialogue in Philadelphia at the Summer Business Meeting. We want to hear from you about the ways in which SWS can improve to meet the needs of our members. We invite you to review the SWS Mission Statement in preparation for this meeting. 

Saturday, October 14, 2023

11:30 am – 12:30 pm EDT  – SWS Student Town Hall: Queer Inclusion at SWS

In this co-facilitated Town Hall meeting, members are encouraged to continue discussions that began in Philadelphia during the 2023 SWS summer meeting about the need for sustained institutionalized support for 2SLGBTQIA+ members. Particular emphasis will be provided for discussions concerning the types of intersectional supports and resources necessary for QTBIPOCs, disabled, trans, enbies, and additional folx who continue to be marginalized within Queer and institutionalized spaces. The goal of this Town Hall is to begin the process of moving beyond discussion so that we can begin generating tangible action-oriented practices that can be implemented by SWS, as the institution continues striving for radical inclusion. Discussions and actions.

For more information on the SWS Virtual Student and Junior Community Scholar Symposium (SJCSS), please visit: https://socwomen.org/sws-virtual-student-and-junior-community-scholar-symposium-sjcss/

Queering SWS: Seeking Radical Inclusion in a Complex World

January 25 – January 28, 2024

Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico

President-Elect: S.L. Crawley

Program Committee Chair: Piper Sledge

The Submission System is now closed.
Deadline to Submit was October 20, 2023 at 11:59 pm EDT

Note that you must be a Current SWS Member to submit for the 2024 Winter Meeting

Program Committee Members: Nasra Abubakar, LaToya Council, Hayden J. Fulton, Shuvechha Ghimire, Pedrom Nasiri, Carmela M. Roybal, Mangala Subramaniam, Barbara Sutton

Hyatt Regency Tamaya Resort & Spa
We have secured a rate of $179 per night (plus applicable state and local taxes).
Hotel Room Reservation System

Theme and Call for Papers:

The 2024 Winter meeting theme is: “Queering SWS: Seeking Radical Inclusion in a Complex World.”

In recent years, “queering” has come to imply a focus on gender and sexualities as topics, though queer theory offers a much broader focus on anti-essentialism and anti-normativity, including heteronormativity, cisnormativity, racialization, and imperialism/colonialisms, queer work critiques all forms of power, especially boundary-making around identity categories (i.e., Butler’s question: what is a woman?). All forms of work on feminist/antiracist/queer/transnational/indigenous topics are welcome. We understand queering as a broader path to considering radical inclusion — seeking a model that avoids centering common forms of privilege in meaning-making. Yet, lived experience often draws on categorical identities (race, class, gender, sexuality, religiosity, generation) in important ways which we must not demean. Throughout the conference, we will ask: How does categorical identity politics help us understand our lived experiences and how does it raise problematic boundaries? In this meeting, together we will be seeking—inquiring, critiquing, developing—what radical inclusion can look like.

With this call for papers, we encourage a wide variety of types of submissions for presentations or discussions that seed interactive and collaborative conversations, using a round-table format. Please submit your abstract– which may describe a traditional empirical or theoretical paper, half-baked or early-stage ideas, pedagogical concerns, activist practices/public sociology, or other academic interests you wish to discuss with others who share your topic. In short, presentations are not limited to traditional conference presentations, though those are also welcome. Abstracts will be grouped around like topics for roundtable discussion. (Limit one abstract per member, please, to facilitate meeting planning.)

Note: When you submit, please keep in mind that we will not have audiovisual support for PowerPoint capabilities and film screenings in the breakout rooms.

The 2024 Winter Meeting Program Committee is putting together panels. If you have an idea for a panel or would like to submit a fully formed panel, please contact a member of the Program Committee or Piper Sledge, the Program Committee Chair, with your idea by October 13, 2023.

2024 SWS Winter Meeting Program Committee: https://socwomen.org/2024-sws-winter-meeting-program-committee/

If you have a new book to celebrate, we would like to celebrate and highlight all books in one interactive space. Please give the details of your new book. We will work with all authors to organize the book celebration.

Meet the 2024 Winter Meeting Program Committee!

Nasra Abubakar (she/her), International Committee Representative
nabubaka@kent.edu

LaToya Council (she/her), Sister to Sister Committee Representative
ldc221@lehigh.edu

LaToya Council is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at Lehigh University. Her research interests are race, gender, and class; work and family; health and wellness. When not researching and writing, LaToya enjoys baking, meditation, yoga, and hanging with her cat, Mimi.

S.L. Crawley (they/them), SWS President-Elect
scrawley@usf.edu

S. L. Crawley is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences and Affiliate Faculty in the Department of Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of South Florida. Crawley’s areas of interest include embodiment (gender/sexualities/race/class) theories, queer and feminist theories, epistemology and qualitative methods, social psychology and sociology of sport, focusing on productions of identity and social impacts on the physical body.

Hayden J. Fulton (he/him), Student Representative
hfulton@usf.edu

Hayden J. Fulton is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Sociology and Interdisciplinary Social Sciences at the University of South Florida. Working at the intersection of medical sociology, trans studies, feminist science studies, and the sociology of gender, his research focuses on how medicine’s cisnormative taxonomies of gender impact patients’ access to care. 

Shuvechha Ghimire (she/her), Student Representative
shuvechhag@usf.edu

Shuvechha Ghimire is a doctoral candidate at the University of South Florida. Her dissertation explores the associational life of the Nepali diaspora in Central and South Florida. Specifically, the complex ways in which this community produces identity constructs related to caste, nationality, and gender, all while actively engaging with Nepali diasporic associations. Her research interests include Global and Transnational Sociology, Sociology of Gender, politics of belonging, and the South Asian diaspora. 

Pedrom Nasiri (they/them), Student Representative
pedromnasiri@gmail.com

Pedrom Nasiri is a Joseph-Armand Bombardier Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Sociology, at the University of Calgary. Pedrom’s research interests are located at the intersections of sociology of families, im/migration, law, queer sociology, intersectionality, and critical phenomenology. Their doctoral research examines the increasing prevalence of multiple-partner families in Canada and USA and its articulations with ongoing race, gender, and class formation projects. Pedrom is also the research project coordinator for a community-based research project funded by Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada, which explores how newcomer youth perceptions, experiences, and interpretations of race, racism, and anti-racism transform during the re/settlement processes and how such transformations may inform re/settlement programs and services in anti-racist ways.

Carmela M. Roybal (She/her/Kwiyo)
croybal@avanyuhealth.com

Carmela M. Roybal (Than Povi) is a research professor and the Executive Director of the Native American Budget and Policy Institute (NABPI) at the University of New Mexico. Trained as a medical sociologist, bioethicist, and policy analyst, her community-based research projects interrogate suicide, opioid misuse, and mental health disparities across tribal communities. Through a decolonial lens her intersectional knowledge projects are guided by attention to the simultaneity of structural inequalities, such as settler colonialism, structural racism, racialized capitalism, sexism, and heteropatriarchy, all of which shape the lives of Indigenous peoples marginalized communities across the United States and globally. 

Born and raised in New Mexico, land, culture, and language, are all an integral part of her existence. She calls Ohkay Owingeh (Land of the Strong) and the Embudo Valley her home. 

Piper Sledge (she/her or they/them), Program Committee Chair
psledge@arizona.edu

Piper Sledge is an Associate Professor in the Gender and Women’s Studies Department of the University of Arizona. Piper is interested in understanding the meanings and embodiment of race and gender through the confluence of Queer theories, Black feminist theories, Critical-Mixed Race Studies, and Indigenous Studies all broadly construed. Piper is also the Director of Community-based Initiatives and Research for the Indigenous Partnership Program (IPP) of Cosmic Explorer, a next generation gravitational wave detector. 

Mangala Subramaniam (she/her)
subramaniamm@vcu.edu

Mangala Subramaniam is the Senior Vice Provost for Faculty Affairs and Professor of Sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University. She provides strategic and operational leadership in overseeing the university’s faculty, thereby building and strengthening the academic mission and infrastructure for VCU. Key components of the responsibilities include faculty development, including initiatives for professional development of faculty and department chairs; faculty support for teaching & learning, awards and recognition, university-wide mentoring initiative, promotion and tenure, faculty policies and procedures, adjunct faculty. Starting February 2023, Subramaniam also oversees the Q-Collective (LGBTQIA+ community at VCU); Institute for Inclusion, Inquiry & Innovation (iCubed) focused on faculty, IExcel education, and PACME awards.

Barbara Sutton (she/her)
bsutton@albany.edu

Barbara Sutton is a Professor and Chair of the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University at Albany, SUNY. She is also affiliated with the departments of Sociology and of Latin American, Caribbean, and U.S. Latino Studies. She is interested in body politics, multiple forms of violence, and intersecting inequalities, among other sociological issues. She was born and raised in Argentina, where she attended the University of Buenos Aires, earning a law degree. In the United States, she earned her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Oregon.

NEXT SWS AWARD CYCLE

October 1, 2023 Deadline

SWS is pleased to recognize many forms of outstanding feminist work.

All Awards Will be Given Out at 2024 Winter Meeting in Santa Ana Pueblo, New Mexico January 25-28, 2024.

The 2024 Winter Meeting Page

Awards Form now open: https://sws.memberclicks.net/awardsoct23

Seeking Applicants:

Social Actions Initiative Awards:

Through the Social Actions Initiative Awards, the Social Action Committee directly supports and encourages the social activism of SWS members.

Cheryl Allyn Miller Award:

This award recognizes a sociology graduate student, or a recent doctorate, whose research or activism constitutes an outstanding contribution to the field of women and work.

Seeking Nominations:

Feminist Lecturer Award:

This lectureship was created to recognize those whose scholarship employs a feminist perspective. The goal is to make these scholars more available to campuses where such a voice is unusual and/or unwelcome.

Feminist Activism Award:

This award recognizes an SWS member who has made notable contributions to improving the lives of women in society, especially through activism.

Undergraduate Social Action Award:

This award carries on the tradition of acknowledging, affirming and inviting students to participate in SWS. Nominated by current SWS Member.

Feminist Mentoring Award:

This award honors an SWS member who is an outstanding feminist mentor.

NEW SWS AWARD! SWS Applied Sociology Award:

SWS is pleased to announce the establishment of a new award to recognize the important contributions of applied sociology within the discipline, to formally value the work of applied sociologists within our membership, and to highlight SWS representation of the interests and concerns of feminist sociologists working in academia and in the applied world. As an organization that both welcomes and supports the leadership of sociologists from diverse race, class, and ethnic backgrounds, as well as gender identities, ages, sexualities and abilities, this award formally recognizes SWS’s welcoming and supportive spirit to feminist applied sociologists.

Dear friends and colleagues,

We’re thrilled to step into the co-editorship of Gender & Society. We began our editorial work with new submissions on May 1, 2023. Our first full issue, as the new editorial team, will be out in February 2024.

Given the long history of critical feminist scholarship and leadership by former editors, the SWS Publications Committee, and the SWS community at large, we recognize the responsibilities on us to continue this legacy. We are confident that we will rise to the occasion over the next four years with our team of deputy editors, Professors Erika Busse-Cárdenas (Macalester College), Ben Carrington (University of Southern California), Pei-Chia Lan (National Taiwan University), Ghassan Moussawi (University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign) and stef shuster (Michigan State University). The deputy editors reflect what is best in our discipline’s trans/gender/ racial foci. They inflect their sociologies with transnational sensibilities, and with both qualitative and quantitative methodological skills. In addition we have an outstanding team of student managing editors, namely Erin Carpenter and Jasmine Underwood from the University of Georgia and Alexander Holt from the University of Texas at Austin.

We take up our editorship at a particularly troubling time for scholars of gender, in the midst of a concerted backlash against feminism in general and against critical research on gender, race, and sexuality. It seems that global predicaments increase exponentially every year. The list could go on, but here are a few: climate refugees, racial violence, food insecurity, evisceration of reproductive and transgender justice. While troubled by the socio-economic and political zeitgeist, the seven of us recognize that the discipline of sociology is in the throes of a renaissance informed by a wealth of theoretical approaches, methodological innovations, and political orientations. We hope to bring some of that excitement apparent in the discipline to the pages of Gender & Society and that you will consider sending your manuscripts to us.

Under Barbara Risman’s editorial team’s guidance Gender & Society has grown by leaps and bounds. We are grateful for her leadership with the journal. We are also grateful for the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) team that helped us transition into our new roles almost seamlessly.

As the incoming editorial team, we take seriously our responsibilities to both understand and respect the founding principles of this journal and also to move the journal forward, to ensure it remains relevant to the debates and issues of the second decade of the twenty-first century. We welcome submissions from all scholars studying gender and sexuality whose approaches are sociologically informed, even if they are not, formally, sociologists or working within departments of sociology. We encourage all colleagues to submit to us, regardless of geographical location, rank, experience, or time in the academy. We look forward to reading your work, working with you, and seeing you in print in Gender & Society.

Thanks all.Patricia Richards (University of Georgia) and Sharmila Rudrappa (University of Texas at Austin)

Photo of Sharmila Rudrappa and Patricia Richards
Photo Credit: Tracy Ore