Co-Organizers:
Timothy M. Gill, Associate Professor of Sociology
Harry F. Dahms, Professor of Sociology
The purpose of the UT Social Research Workshop is to cultivate a space wherein professors and graduate students can engage in open and constructive discussion about their works-in-progress. The hope is that as a result of such discussions that scholars might enhance their work and move towards eventual publication. We will send out papers in advance, and we ask attendants to read papers before our meetings so that they might best assist our guests with suggestions and constructive criticism. Should you not have time to read the paper, you are still most welcome to join us. Within the workshop itself, presenters will talk about their paper for 5-10 minutes. The remainder of the time is reserved for open and constructive discussion.
*NOTE: The current semester is at the bottom!
FALL SEMESTER 2020
October 16, 3:30-5:00: “Economic Competition and Police-Caused Killings”
- Stephanie Bohon, Professor of Sociology, University of Tennessee
- Ruben Ortiz, Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture
*
November 13, 4:00-5:30: “The Currency of Classical Critical Theory: Rackets, Authoritarian Personalities, Administered World (and the Prospect of Vitacide)”
- Harry F. Dahms, Professor of Sociology and Co-Chair of the Committee on Social Theory, University of Tennessee
*
November 20: “Putting Out Fires: The Varying Temporalities of Disasters”
- Maricarmen Hernández, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of New Mexico
*
December 04: “The Effect of Economic Shocks on Individual Preferences for Redistribution – The Case Study of Greece”
- Eszter Timar, Graduate Student in Sociology, University of Tennessee
SPRING SEMESTER 2021
January 22: “‘Like a Hotel Stay’: Pay-to-Stay and the Production of Incarceration as a Public Commodity”
- Brittany Friedman, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Faculty Affiliate of the Program in Criminal Justice and the Center for Security, Race, and Rights, Rutgers University
*
February 12: “The Structural Location of Blackness”
- Charisse Burden-Stelly, Visiting Scholar in the Race and Capitalism Project, University of Chicago
*
March 05: “Income Inequality in Rich Democracies: Identifying the Distributional Mechanisms of Structural Change and Institutional Context”
- Matthew Mahutga, Professor of Sociology, UC Riverside, and Michaela Curran, Provost’s Doctoral Fellow, University of Iowa
*
March 26: “Land Grabbing in Colombia and Environmental Governance Mechanisms”
- Álvaro Germán Torres Mora, Graduate Student in Sociology, University of Tennessee
*
April 2: “The Anatomy of Regime Change: Iraqi Exiles, Neoconservatives, and the Invasion of Iraq”
- Wisam Alshaibi, Graduate Student in Sociology, UCLA
SUMMER SEMESTER 2021
May 19: “The Legal Violence of Calling the Police: Abolition and New Radical Municipalism”
- Michelle Brown (University of Tennessee), Kyra Martinez (University of Tennessee), and Vivian Swayne (University of Tennessee)
*
June 2: “Dark Agoras: Insurgent Black Social Life and the Politics of Place”
- J.T. Roane (Arizona State University)
*
June 9: “Palm ‘Waste’ as Flex Crop in the Neoliberal Asian Epoch”
- Paul Gellert (University of Tennessee)
*
June 16: “My War on Error…”
- Jeff Larsen (University of Tennessee)
*
June 23: “On Race and its Overdetermination: Blackness and Whiteness in the Muslim World”
- Leslie Gross-Wyrtzen (Yale University)
*
June 30: “The Enemy of My Enemy is My Friend: Symbolic Boundary Shift and Civil War Recurrence in Mid-Twentieth Century Colombia”
- Laura Acosta (Northwestern University)
*
July 7: “Democratic Practice amidst Precarious Opportunity: Grounded Insights from the Post-Arab Spring, Pre-Civil War Period in Yemen and Libya (2012-13)”
- Dana Moss (University of Notre Dame)
*
July 28: “The 1919-1920 Uprising (Trinidad and Tobago)”
- Zophia Edwards (Providence College)
FALL SEMESTER 2021
September 10: “Race Self-Labeling Decisions for Multiracial People: The Impact of Gender, Social Class, and Political Party Affiliation”
- Sarah Castillo (University of Tennessee)
*
September 24: “Capitalism and Tutelage: How Liberal Democratization Reconstituted Race”
- Ricarda Hammer (University of Michigan/UC Berkeley)
*
October 8: “How Will We Move: Modeling Climate-Driven Age-Specific Displacement Migration”
- Matt Hauer (Florida State University)
*
October 22: “Gaslighting as a Response to Sexual Harassment”
- Christine Vossler (University of Tennessee)
*
November 12: “Queer Theory and the Future of Work”
- AJ Knowles (University of Tennessee and University of Bielefeld, Germany)
*
November 19: “Rethinking the Environmental Significance of Race: Blackness and the Socioecological Afterlife of Slavery”
- Michael Murphy (University of Pittsburgh)
SPRING SEMESTER 2022
February 4: “The War on Everyone: An Update on the Political Economy of Private Military & Private Security Companies”
- Cameron Graham (University of Tennessee)
*
February 11: TBA,
- Rossana Diaz (University of Tennessee)
*
February 18: “Power Plants Legacies: The Temporalities of Energy Justice from Coal Ash to the Virtual Power Plant”
- Nikki Luke (University of Tennessee)
*
February 25: Violence: “The Formation and Dissolution of the Racist Self“
- Kathleen Blee (University of Pittsburgh)
*
March 4: “Socioecological Change in 21st Century Indonesia: Forest Fires, Responsibility, and the Politics of Commodity Frontiers”
- Paul Gellert (University of Tennessee)
*
March 25: “Reproduction, Rumors, and Religion: the Political Economy of Family Planning in Senegal”
- Takiyah Harper-Shipman (Davidson College)
*
April 1: “Politics of Exclusion: Conservative Movements and Networks Invested in the Marginalization of LGBTQ+ Peoples”
- Symantha Gregorash (University of Tennessee)
FALL SEMESTER 2022
September 30: “The Role of Environmentalism in Left and Right Xenophobia in the United States”
- Stephanie Bohon, Maddie Ross, Christian Lewelling, Nadya Vera, and Ashley Browning (University of Tennessee)
*
October 28: “No Time to Reflect: 007, International Politics, and Conflict Through the Lens of Planetary Sociology”
- Cameron Graham (University of Tennessee)
*
November 04: “Cotton, Whiteness & Other Poisons”
- Brian Williams (Mississippi State University)
*
November 11: “The Subservient Role of Diversity and Inclusion in the Making of White Academia: An Analysis of a Diversity and Inclusion Center at a Flagship University”
- Joong Won Kim (University of Tennessee)
*
December 02: “Tipping Hats, Riding Coattails: Reference Networks in American Country Music”
- Tim Malacarne (Nevada State College)
Spring Semester 2023
February 10: “The Knoxville Power Elite”
- Cameron Graham, Christian Lewelling, and Jon Shefner (University of Tennessee)
*
February 17: “The appeal and counter-productivity of property destruction as a climate change strategy”
- Ryan Gunderson (Miami University)
*
April 21: “Artificial Intelligence between Relations of Production and Forces of Production”
- Harry F. Dahms (University of Tennessee)
*
April 28: “Some kind of truth: photographish images as evidence”
- Alison Gerber, Lund University
FALL SEMESTER 2024
October 13: “The Heritage Industrial Complex: History and the Settler Colonial Present in the Nation’s Oldest City”
- Camille Petersen (University of Tennessee)
FALL SEMESTER 2023
April 12: “It’s not about numbers, it’s about Power”: How Latino Young Adults’ Imagine the Ethnic and Racial Demographic Future of the United States.”
- Eileen Diaz McConnell (Arizona State University)