NU

Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences

A Newsletter from the Department of Sociology

Chair’s statement — The four colleagues we celebrate today each represent the excellence and scholarly courage that Northwestern Sociology is known for.

Jeremy Freese January 2011

Investiture Event In This Issue . . . On November 10, 2010 a ceremony was held by the Dean of the Wein- berg College of Arts and Sciences, Sarah Mangelsdorf, to celebrate Faculty Recognition recently endowed fellowships. This was the first time the College has celebrated the installation of four chair-holders in one department a Sociology Library single ceremony.

Notable Alumni Steve Epstein, John C. Shaffer Professor in the Humanities

Interdisciplinary Wendy Griswold, Clusters Bergen Evans Professor in the Humanities

Alumni Profile Aldon Morris, Leon Forrest Professor of Sociology

Qatar Mary Pattillo, Harold Washington Professor of Sociology and African American Studies

Let us hear from you: Our Department does not just represent an intellectual discipline. Department of Sociology It is also a place where people teach and learn, meet requirements for Alumni News degrees, prepare for and pursue careers, and develop and maintain 1810 Chicago Avenue intellectual, professional, and personal ties. Evanston, IL 60208 Phone: (847) 491-5415 Books and articles by the faculty and students regularly win prizes Fax: (847) 491-9907 and honors, and we do extremely well in national ranking systems. [email protected] Even our most demanding courses are well received by both majors and non-majors. One could make a plausible case for eavesdropping on our hallway conversations as a good introduction to the sociologi- cal imagination. Page 2 Investiture Awards

In the late 1980s, as I was White—were all ideal men- pursuing my studies as a tors. All professors working graduate student at Berke- with doctoral programs, in- ley while living across the cluding myself, try to offer bay in San Francisco, I stinging critiques of the sta- their students this type of found myself at Ground Ze- tus of AIDS research. As I mentoring. ro of a medical and social began to study them, I disaster. This was a time learned that these AIDS Wendy Griswold before combination an- treatment activists had set tiretroviral therapy, a time of out on a grand project to My parents decided I would governmental inaction on a transform public health in participate in Milwaukee’s mass scale, a time when the by, as relatively new high school public discourse surround- they put it, getting drugs bussing program that sent ing AIDS still often centered into bodies — altering the city students of color to around the idea that devas- procedures of drug schools in Milwaukee’s pre- tating illness was God’s discovery, testing, and dominately white suburbs. I revenge for immorality. It licensing in order to speed went to Whitefish Bay (nick was a grim time. But it up the scientific response named White Folks Bay). occurred to me then that if to a deadly disease. I ended All of the black students sociology was something up arguing that AIDS activ- attending the school were worth doing, then it ought ists served as a model of bused in. This experience to have something to say how laypeople might, at cultivated in me an interest about the consequential least sometimes, usefully in race, class, inequality, events that were unfolding contribute to the advance- and place. We black all around me. With that ment of biomedical students took the public assessment in mind, I set knowledge, and I suggested bus into and out of White- out to write a dissertation that their interventions had fish Bay every day. We about the AIDS epidemic. in fact provided a template might have desegregated But what sort of disserta- for all sorts of patient asso- Whitefish Bay, but we sure- tion? In one of those path- ciations that have arisen in ly did not integrate it. In- altering accidents of timing their wake. stead, we lived in parallel and circumstance, I became Steven Epstein worlds – our predominately fascinated by a kind of white wealthy school in the activism that I saw emerg- The inspiration doctoral suburbs and our predomi- ing in places like San students receive from their nately black poor, working Francisco. Central to the professors constitutes the class, and middle class agenda of these activists single most important neighborhoods in the city – was a remarkable mode of influence shaping in the a DuBoisian double con- engagement with biomedi- development of schol- sciousness for sure. It was c a l k n o w l e d g e a n d ars. The examples of key this experience that I shared expertise. I remember going role models from my own when I visited the office of to community forums where graduate school days — my advisor, William Julius activists with no formal the sociologists, Orlando Wilson, in my first year of medical or scientific Patterson, Theda Skocpol, graduate school at the training got up and gave Ann Swidler, and Harrison . Mary Pattillo Page 3

Racial oppression, the Civil Rights Move- duced to sociology. Because of the ment, the Vietnam War, and the influences knowledge I gained from gifted teachers of gifted, devoted, teachers at Olive Harvey there, I considered making scholarship my Junior College and Bradley University were life-long profession. From there I attended the factors that drove me to become a Bradley University where my knowledge of scholar. sociology and scholarship deepened be- One of my earliest memories is the 1955 cause of my studies with additional gifted lynching of fourteen year old Emmett Till of teachers. It was at this point that I decided Chicago in Money, Mississippi located just to dedicate my professional life to soci- a few miles from where I lived. I became a ology and scholarship. part of the Till Generation because his All scholarship is rooted in personal lynching taught me about the wholesale biography. I have always tried to engage in injustice of Jim Crow racism. That racism scholarship and activism that look human led me to become a scholar of the Civil inequality squarely in the eyes. I do so Rights Movement and racial inequality. because it is my belief that scholarship The Vietnam War led me to enroll at Olive seeking to understand oppression is indis- Harvey Junior college so I could obtain a pensable to discovering the keys that un- deferment because I thought the war lock doors to freedom. unwise. It was there that I was first intro- Aldon Morris

Book Award Highest Honors

The Russian version of Profes- John Hagan, John D. MacArthur Professor sor Georgi Derluguian's book, of Sociology and Law, and Co-director of Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in the Center on Law and Globalization at the the Caucasus, won first prize in American Bar Foundation in Chicago, was the social thought, category of recently elected to the American the national book selection Academy of Arts and Sciences. (Russia's national book award). Hagan pioneered the application of Bourdieu's Secret Admirer in advanced crime-measurement techniques the Caucasus is an account of to the study of genocide in his empirical the rise and fall of Soviet socialism. work on violence in Darfur and the Balkans Derluguian reconstructs from firsthand in 2003-2005 and was honored with the accounts the life story of Musa Shanib, who Stockholm Prize in Criminology in 2009. from a small town in the Caucasus grew to be Using systematic methods of estimating an intellectual reformer and, after 1989, a deaths from surveys administered by non- leader in several revolutions and wars, from governmental organizations and the U.S. Abkhazia to Chechnya. State Department, Hagan led research Shanib's story allows Derluguian to add a studies that found that widely circulated human dimension to his analysis of abstract murder estimates in the tens of thousands notions like globalization, the end of in Darfur should have been in the hundreds communism, democratization, the politics of of thousands. ethnic identity, and terrorism. Simultaneously He is the co-author of Darfur and the drawing on the work of Charles Tilly, Crime of Genocide, which received the Immanuel Wallerstein, and Bourdieu. American Sociological Association Crime, Derluguian presents an explanation of ethnic Law and Deviance Section's Albert J. Reiss wars in the wake of Soviet collapse. Distinguished Publication Award and the American Society of Criminology's Michael

J. Hindelang Book Award.

Page 4

Sociology Library Sociology Notable Alumni

David Harris (PhD 1997) is currently on Hector Carrillo leave from his position as Deputy Provost The Night Is Young: Sexuality (and Professor of Sociology) at Cornell in Mexico in The Time of AIDS University to serve in the Obama administra- University of Chicago Press, 2001 tion as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Human Services Policy in the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation under the Department of Health and Human Anthony S. Chen Services. This group focuses on policy The Fifth Freedom: Jobs, related to welfare, poverty, service delivery Politics, and Civil Rights in the issues, data for research, policies affecting United States, 1941-1972 children, youth, and families and economic Princeton University Press, 2009 matters affecting HHS.

Steven Epstein Judith Blau (PhD 1972) is currently Inclusion: The Politics of Professor of Sociology at the University of Difference in Medical Research North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is a prolific University of Chicago Press, 2009 scholar whose recent work has focused on human rights and the difficulties and paradox- es of attempts to implement human rights agendas. She is the Director of the Human Wendy Griswold Rights Center of Chapel Hill & Carrboro. She Regionalism and the Reading is also President of the US chapter of Sociolo- Class gists without Borders (which is affiliated with University of Chicago Press, 2008 Sociologists without Borders International/ Sociólogos sin Fronteras [SSF]). She also writes for the Huffington Post and Common Dreams.org. Gregoire Mallard Global Science and National Sovereignty: Studies in Troy Duster (PhD 1962) is a very active and Historical Sociology of Science engaging scholar. Duster focuses especially on Routledge, 2009 issues regarding race. He taught for many years at the University of California-Berkeley and is now Professor of Sociology at . He served as President of the Mary Pattillo American Sociological Association in 2005. In Black on the Block: The Politics the same year, he also received an honorary of Race and Class in the City degree from Northwestern (to add to his earned University of Chicago Press, 2007 PhD). He is the grandson of Ida B. Wells.

Eduardo Mondlane (PhD 1960) now Monica Prasad deceased was born in Mozambique in 1920. When he was 31, he came to the US to study at The Politics of Free Markets: Oberlin, where he received his BA in Anthro- The Rise of Neoliberal Economic pology and Sociology in 1953. In 1962, he Policies in Britain, France, was elected President of the Mozambican Germany, and the United States Liberation Front (FRELIMO). In 1969, he was University Of Chicago Press, 2006 elected President of a more unified FRELIMO. FRELIMO was then headquartered in Tanzania and was, in effect, a government in exile. Later Celeste Watkins-Hayes in 1969, Mondlane was killed by a bomb con- The New Welfare Bureaucrats: cealed in a book sent to him at FRELIMO Entanglements of Race, Class, headquarters. In 1975, the national university and Policy Reform (founded by the Portuguese) in the Mozambi- University of Chicago Press, 2009 quan capital city of Maputo was renamed Universidade Eduardo Mondlane. Page 5 The Graduate School Interdisciplinary Cluster Initiative

The Interdisciplinary Cluster Initiative, developed by The Graduate School, is a program designed to aide graduate students during their academic career at Northwestern by fostering connections with students and faculty in other programs with whom they might have natural intellectual affinities. Interdisciplinary clusters in different areas of intellectu- al inquiry have been developed by faculty across schools and programs and provide a se- cond intellectual home for incoming and current graduate students. Clusters offer their own separate courses and sponsor a number of activities and events for students and faculty. Students interested in interdisciplinary study are also encouraged to take courses in interdisciplinary doctoral programs such as Religion, Screen Cultures, and African American Studies. Faculty in these programs are also very engaged in interdisciplinary study both within and beyond the cluster programs.

Grads’ views on the Cluster Initiative

For me, the Cluster Initiative signals My Latin American and Caribbean Studies Northwestern's strong commitment to building fellowship has provided me with strong interdisciplinary connections through a formal connections to Latin Americanists at but flexible mechanism. Being an Inter- Northwestern, most of whom are not disciplinary (Gender Studies) fellow, it already sociologists. This makes Northwestern ideal for allowed me to make significant contacts in the the study of my original interests. Gender Studies Program and beyond. I feel that the opportunities to make these Taryn Nelson-Seawright connections through the program makes Northwestern an ideal place to rigorously con- I am interested in the sociology of knowledge, duct both discipline-based and interdisciplinary science and law. I have a master’s degree in research. public health, and I worked domestically and Clare Fostie internationally before starting the PhD program. The Science Studies Cluster Initiative As someone who originally came from a was one of the major reasons I decided to humanities background, and is interested in come to Northwestern. It provides a wonderful how the humanities and the social sciences opportunity to meet and learn from students speak to one another, I felt a fellowship in and faculty with similar interests across Rhetoric and Public Culture would be an asset departments. The Klopsteg Lecture Series, the to my academic experience at Northwestern. Science Studies Doctoral Colloquium, and the interdisciplinary reading group have greatly Gemma M. Mangione enriched my graduate studies and deepened my knowledge of the field. Through this The Interdisciplinary Cluster Initiative provides initiative, I have attended professional a multi-layered and multi-sited perspective that development workshops on a variety of topics, is intellectually stimulating, thought-provoking, including grant writing, book publishing in challenging, and comparative, and it encour- Science Studies, publishing journal articles and ages us to be in touch with people from the peer review process, developing a different departments. dissertation proposal, and research methods Hayrunnisa Goksel across disciplines. I have enjoyed building relationships with students outside of the The SHC Cluster gives me exposure to the department, and our discussions have ways allied fields are responding to the most provided an excellent forum for peer review current and exigent issues in science and and feedback. technology studies, while challenging me to share my own ideas in ways that translate Jaimie Morse across disciplines. Joseph Guisti Page 6

Sociology Major Hired Over Economic Majors

While I can't speak to every detail as to why I was hired over economics majors at Merrill Lynch in Chicago, I can describe how I leveraged my sociology major in the interview process and how it was beneficial to me as my resume was pored over by the managers. In the interview for the position of Client Associate in the Global Private Client Group at Merrill Lynch, I focused on two areas. One: I highlighted my interpersonal skills and adaptability to various social situ- ations which were developed through my ethnographic training. I knew this would set me apart because I had tangible examples of the experience I gained working with all sorts of populations while conducting my thesis research and through both my independent study with Dr. Karrie Ann Snyder and my work in Sociology 329-Field Research and Methods of Data Collection. Two: I emphasized my ability to create, start, and finish a project involving complex steps and many setbacks, namely—my senior thesis. I highlighted my creativity in formulating the question and the measures I would take to answer it. I also underscored the independent nature of the thesis; I was in charge of everything: recruiting the subjects, creating the interview questions, finding collaborators and reaching out to them, working with the IRB, and getting all the pieces to fit together to form a meaningful inquiry. Few interviewees in finance have a piece of work that out- right proves that you can successfully work independently, collaborate with others, be creative, and adapt to the hard parts. As my boss said, "I can teach you about the market. I can't teach you how to work with and impress clients."

Alexandria Tate (2010 , Sociology Major)

Northwestern University in Qatar

Teaching a Sociology Class in Qatar

Assigning students to go out into the world breaking into spontaneous applause for no and violate norms is a time-honored apparent reason. Their reaction papers, tradition of many an introduction to however, were markedly different. In the sociology course. Students have a ball midst of breaking a social norm, adrenaline transgressing the rules of social life and was pumping through my veins and a thrill generally learn something in the process. crawled up my spine, a student wrote, The Assigning this task to my class at sensation was truly pleasurable. It is as if Northwestern University in Doha, Qatar, people have this innate desire to be free however, gave me some pause. After all, and not be constrained by rules and these are students who have been social- reprimands. ized to believe that violating norms is a Many of us become sociologists in hopes decidedly bad thing. Breaking the rules on of making the world a better place, however purpose does not come as easily as it small the scale of our ambition. In Doha, might to their Western counterparts. one has the satisfaction of knowing one is The Doha students chose to breach making a difference one tiny norm violation norms similar to those selected by their at a time. U.S. peers: pushing all of the buttons on an elevator, wearing silly clothing in public, Geoff Harkness