President’s Corner
Welcome to SWS-South!
Sociologists for Women in Society-South: Policies and Procedures
For information about SWS-S Southern Hand Mentoring Programs: https://socwomen.org/sws-s-southern-hand-mentoring-programs/
Sws-South Profiles
Current Officers
Mandi N. Barringer (she/her) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of North Florida. Her research and teaching interests include sexualities, gender, religion, and applied sociology. She has utilized quantitative data to examine gender and sexual minorities’ religious identities, subjective well-being, and attitudes toward American mainline religious traditions. Her academic articles also cover religiosity, religious identity, and birth cohort attitudes. Her work has been published in journals such as Social Currents, Journal of Homosexuality, and Sociological Inquiry.
Baker A. Rogers is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Georgia Southern University. Their research and teaching focuses on inequality, specifically examining the intersections of gender, sexuality, and religion in the U.S. South. Check out their books, Conditionally Accepted: Christians’ Perspectives on Sexuality and Gay and Lesbian Civil Rights and Trans Men in the South: Becoming Men. Also, their book, King of Hearts: Drag Kings in the American South, will be released with Rutgers University Press in October 2021. Their work is published in numerous academic journals, including Gender & Society; Journal of Interpersonal Violence; Qualitative Sociology; Sexualities; and more.
Ashley Vancil-Leap – Vice President
Ashley Vancil-Leap is an Assistant Teaching Professor of Sociology and affiliate faculty of Gender Studies at Mississippi State University. She is a gender scholar who focuses on the links between culture, identity, labor, food insecurity, and inequalities such as race and class. Her work has examined the physical and emotional labor of school food service employees in a Midwest city in response to local, state, and national policy changes to school breakfast and lunch programs. Her latest work focuses on food insecurity in Mississippi. Her work can be seen in Advances in Gender Research and Gender Issues.
Harry Barbee is a postdoctoral researcher at the Vanderbilt University LGBT Policy Lab and Center for Medicine, Health, and Society. Their research examines how social and demographic factors–especially gender and sexuality–affect people’s health and aging. Harry is currently funded by the National Institutes of Health to work on the Vanderbilt University Social Networks, Aging, and Policy Study–a panel study of middle-age and older LGBTQ+ adults residing in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Overall, Harry hopes their research will fuel policy initiatives aimed at reducing health disparities and improving LGBTQ+ people’s experiences of aging.
Rachel Allison – Awards Chair
Rachel Allison is an Associate Professor and affiliate of Gender Studies at Mississippi State University. Her research interests include gender, sexualities, sport, family, and higher education. Most recently, she has studied the challenges facing women’s professional team sport in the U.S. Rachel is the author of Kicking Center: Gender and the Selling of Women’s Professional Soccer, published with Rutgers University Press in 2018. Her research has also appeared in Qualitative Sociology, Leisure Sciences, and Sociology of Sport Journal.
Ariane Prohaska – Hand Mentor Program Coordinator
Ariane Prohaska is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Alabama. Her research and teaching areas focus on gender, bodies, fat studies, and inequality after disasters. She has published articles in numerous journals including Fat Studies, Journal of Gender Studies, Qualitative Research, and Critical Policy Studies. Dr. Prohaska has a passion for mentoring undergraduate students learning the research process. Her current research examines the social construction of beauty and femininity in various beauty pageants. In her free time, she enjoys spending time outdoors with her husband, Jay, and pets Charlie (cat) and Copper (dog).
Stacy Salerno – Membership
Shaneda Destine – Vision Committee Chair
Dr. Shaneda Destine is an Assistant Professor with a dual appointment in Sociology and Africana Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Dr. Destine’s research focus is race, gender, sexuality, and contemporary social movements. She is most interested in how state violence effects the overall well-being of marginalized people. She investigates forms of resistance of Black women and Black Queer people, as they create spaces of Black Joy and Respite, while struggling for liberation. Her research highlights the unique ways Black women and femmes are affected by state violence and the ways in which they strategize and negotiate organizing, leading and caring for themselves and movement participants, as part of their political practice. Dr. Destine’s work is theoretically informed by Critical Race Theory, Intersectionality, and Black Radical Social Movement Theory. Her goal is to further the notion that race, gender, class, and sexuality act as vectors of oppressions central to the sustaining global capitalism and systemic oppression, particularly through state violence. Dr. Destine’s work can be found in Humanity and Society, Issues in Race & Society: An Interdisciplinary Global Journal 4 (1), and Societies Without Borders: Human Rights and the Social Sciences 10 (1). She is currently working on multiple articles and a book project.
Jennifer Carruth – Newsletter
Sarah A. Rogers – Archivist/Historian
Sarah A. Rogers is an Instructor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of South Carolina. Her research focuses on gender and victimization, particularly focusing on sexual assault on campus, especially as it relates to prevention programming. Her work also focuses on trans men’s blurred boundaries between victimization and offending. She has published work in the Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Violence Against Women, and Sociological Spectrum.
Brenda Savage – SSS Program Coordinator
Brianna Patterson – Student Delegate
Resources & Announcements
SWS South Meeting Photos
The photos from the SSS 2019 meetings are now available. They are all posted Tracy E. Ore’s website in a private gallery available through the link here.
To download high resolution photos, first click on the image. The image will then open and you will see an icon menu on the bottom of the page. Click on the down arrow and the photo will download. The downloads are free.
Special thanks to Tracy for taking these pictures and sharing them with SWS.
Join the listserv
Email Natasha Santana to be added to the SWS-South listserv. Newsletter releases and a few other events are announced on the list; otherwise, it is not a high volume list.
SOCIOLOGISTS FOR WOMEN IN SOCIETY (SWS) is an international organization of social scientists. Members include undergraduate and graduate students, university and college faculty, researchers in business and government, freelance writers, and journalists. SWS members share expertise and dedication to attaining social equality for women and minorities.
SWS-SOUTH is a regional chapter serving the same purposes as, and in liaison with, the international SWS organization. Our membership is comprised of scholars from universities and institutions in the South that are actively engaged in studying and teaching about the issues that affect women. Members network within the organization as a means of increasing their success in this pursuit.
We hold meetings annually in conjunction with the Southern Sociological Society (SSS). Between annual SWS-South meetings, our bi-annual newsletter and our listserv are the primary means of communication and of keeping our network alive and vigorous. If you are not a member, please join today!
Click here for a copy of our chapter polices and procedures.
For information about SWS-S Southern Hand Mentoring Programs: https://socwomen.org/sws-s-southern-hand-mentoring-programs/
Check out our previous newsletters to see what we’ve been up to!
Click dates to view and download newsletters in pdf format.
SWS-South gives out awards!
As an organization, SWS-South grants one award each year for gender scholarship, rotating between two different awards during odd and even years. Please read below for details regarding these awards and the nomination process.
2018 and even years
Early Career Gender Scholar Award
Junior scholars who are making a noteworthy contribution to our understanding of the sociology of gender will have an opportunity to apply for the Early Career Gender Scholar Award! Nominees should have authored groundbreaking work (that can include articles and/or a book) that advances the scholarship of gender. As a “career” award, the awards committee will make decisions based on the nominee’s career thus far. While the award is for a gender scholar, consistent with trends in gender scholarship, intersectional work is welcomed.
Eligibility: Assistant professors, postdoctoral scholars, contingent faculty, research associates, or other early career scholars who earned their Ph.D. within the last six years are eligible for this award. Nominees may come from the applicant or from a third party nominator and are due January 15, [even years]. Nominees must be affiliated with SWS-South (if not a current member join here).
Nominations: Nominations are submitted electronically and packets should include the following:
- One nomination letter detailing the merits of the nominee’s work,
- A copy of any articles or books* to be considered for the award,
- A current CV of the nominee.
*Books, but not articles will be returned to the nominator. Please provide electronic versions of books if at all possible.
The award winner will receive a plaque and a one-year membership to SWS-South. In addition, the winner will be featured in the following year’s SWS-South newsletter and will be invited to present their work in a special SWS-South session at the following annual meeting.
2019 and odd years
Graduate Student Paper Award on the Study of Gender
This paper award will be given in odd-numbered years to the best current paper written by a graduate student in the field of the sociology of gender. The purpose of this award is to encourage graduate student scholarship focused on gender and to facilitate the publication process for the student. SWS-South will appoint a mentor who will be available to assist the winning student in preparing the paper for publication in a peer-reviewed journal.
Eligibility: The paper may be co-authored, but only by another graduate student. Faculty-graduate student papers are not eligible. Papers that have previously appeared in publication are not eligible. Nomination packets are to be sent to the SWS-South Awards Committee Chair by January 15, [odd years]. Nominees must be affiliated with SWS-South.
Nominations: Nominations are submitted electronically and packets should include the following:
- One nomination letter detailing the merits of the nominee’s work,
- A copy of the paper to be considered for the award,
- A current CV of the nominee.
The award winner will be recognized at the SWS-South business meeting with a check for $300.00, a plaque, and a one-year membership to SWS-South. An article about the winner’s work will appear in the association’s newsletter, and the recipient will be invited to present their work in a special SWS-South session at the following annual meeting.
Thank you for your interest in joining SWS-South!
Please Note: Membership to SWS-South does not include membership in the National organization.
If you are a member of SWS National, please join or renew membership here.
If you are not a member of SWS National, please join or renew membership here.
The Membership renewal begins each year on November 1. For 2022 membership, it will start on November 1, 2021 and then those memberships will expire on December 31, 2022.
Membership Fees
Student Membership $5
New Membership* $15
Renewal Membership $20
If you would like to purchase a gift membership, please contact Natasha Santana: nsantana@socwomen.org
*New/Contingent/Student memberships
Welcome to SWS South!
President
Baker A. Rogers, Georgia Southern University
Past- President
Marni Brown; Georgia Gwinnett College
Vice-President
Brianna Turgeon; Jacksonville State University
Secretary
Lyla Byers; Virginia Tech
Treasurer
Cheri Chambers; Saint Leo University
Membership Chair
Kimberly Kelly, Mississippi State University
Awards Chair
Andrea Hunt; University of North Alabama
Vision Committee Chair
Girsea Martinez, University of South Florida
Southern Hand Coordinator
Naomi Simmons, Newberry College
Newsletter Editor
Amelia Davies Robinson, Kent State University
SWS National Liaison
Nik Lampe, University of South Carolina
Electronic List Keeper
Natasha Santana, SWS-National