Call for Papers on Community

Posted by on August 20, 2012

From Fry, Melissa S. <frym@ius.edu>

PLEASE FORWARD TO ALL WHO MAY BE INTERESTED

I am organizing a session on “Community” for the 2012 Mid-South Sociological Association Annual Meeting in Mobile, Alabama November 7-10 (conference description below). Many of those who attend the MSSA meetings engage in community-based applied research. My own work as a community-based researcher and Director of the Applied Research and Education Center at IU Southeast has me exploring the idea of community and the role of academics in communities. With this in mind, I am organizing a session that welcomes papers on community as a theoretical and empirical topic of its own, applied research and its role in building community and broader discussions of the changing landscape of rural and urban community development in the 21st century.

This year’s Plenary will feature Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, whose work on race and ethnicity is essential to community-based research in diverse and changing communities. The Mid-South meetings are home to scholars from a wide range of southern colleges and universities as well as academics far and wide who began their studies in the south or under the tutelage of MSSA members. The MSSA Annual Meeting is an excellent opportunity for undergraduate and graduate students to gain experience with professional conferences. The MSSA has paper competitions at both the graduate and undergraduate levels, includes students throughout the program and includes social events to promote relationship building among Sociology students. Mobile, Alabama will provide a great location for a weekend of rich discussion and network building. Please join us!

Papers on “Community” may be submitted directly to me at frym@ius.edu.

Regards,
Melissa

Melissa S. Fry, Ph.D.

Director, Applied Research and Education Center (AREC)
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Phone: 812.941.2105

http://www.ius.edu/arec/

Mid-South Sociological Association
2012 Annual Conference

Paper Submission Deadline September 10, 2012

“As the known facts now stand, it is apparent that sociology was first accepted by the smaller institutions of the South and by the Negro colleges”

L. L. Bernard (1948)

Although the influence of institutions including Yale, Columbia, Kansas and Chicago is often cited as central to the establishment of the discipline in the Unites States, historical documents indicate that Southern institutions and historically Black institutions are the places where the discipline was first embraced in America. It is plausible that the South’s interest in offering scientific study of the “Negro problem” and in studying the transition from rural to urban life contributed to its earlier institutionalization than its geographic counterparts. The result of the South’s embrace was the establishment of influential programs of sociological study like those led by W. E. B. Du Bois at Atlanta University, Howard W. Odum at the University of North Carolina and Charles S. Johnson at Fisk University. The influence of scholarship conducted by southerners and/or grounded in the experiences of American southerners continues today through the works of countless scholars. It is within this tradition of southern sociology that we welcome persons to organize paper sessions and/or volunteer to serve as discussants/presiders for the 2012 Mid-South Sociological Association conference.