Letter from the Chair


LETTER from the (OUTGOING) CHAIR
Happy summer! I hope this pre-conference newsletter finds you all well! It is officially summer, which means our 2018 Annual Meeting in Philadelphia is just around the corner! We have an exciting set of sessions and papers on deck for this year’s meeting (featured in this newsletter), and I look forward to seeing many of you in Philadelphia. I also want to invite you to two SBPC-related events. First, our Divisional Business Meeting will be held on Friday, August 10, from 12:30pm-2:30pm, in Liberty Ballroom A. If you are interested in organizing a session next year or want to get more involved in our Division, you’ll want to attend this meeting! There also is the Division Sponsored Reception, on Saturday, August 11, from 7:45pm-8:45pm, in the Independence Ballroom (mezzanine level). This event is co-sponsored with many SSSP Divisions and is a great occasion to catch up with old friends (and make some new ones). 

I also want to extend congratulations to Sierra Holland (University of Florida). Sierra’s paper, “Navigating Reproductive Inequalities: Emotion Work among Lesbian Couples during the Transition to Parenthood” won this year’s SBPC Graduate Student Paper Award. This year we also awarded an honorable mention to Jess Lee (University of California-Irvine) for the paper “Claiming Racial Insider Status while LGB: Same-Sex Marriage and Racialized Politics of Respectability.” Congratulations to both of our winners, and thanks to Lloyd Klein and our reviewers for serving on the Graduate Student Paper Award committee!

This is my last newsletter as Chair, and I want to thank you all for the great work you have done, and continue to do, to make SBPC a great division in a great organization. It’s been a pleasure to serve you over the past two years as the SBPC Chair, and I am very excited to see how the Division continues to grow and evolve in the future. 

Best wishes,
Amanda M. Jungels
LETTER from the (INCOMING) CHAIR
Colleagues,
I just wanted to take the chance to introduce myself as your new Division president. I’m an interdisciplinary social scientist—culture studies, symbolic interaction, with an affinity for Mills’ ideas of social science—and a professor American Studies at San Jose State. My research focuses on meaning production and cultural change among gay men, particularly in the post-war period through the mid-1970s. I’m loving the breadth of thinking and topics in our upcoming panels at the 2018 conference and am looking forward to hearing as many of you present as possible. 
In our current political climate, I’d like us to consider revisiting our the SBPC’s mission statement to align with some of the challenges we are facing. I’m thinking of the triumph of homonormativity and its inability to meet the challenges of attacks against trans lives, rights, and dignity or the rising violence against gay men (which had been decreasing steadily over the previous decade). I’m thinking of the great risk for women’s sexuality and reproductive freedom in the face of a newly constituted SCOTUS, while we are simultaneously working to protect women’s sexual agency from coercion and violence in the workplace, at home, and on the street. I’m thinking of the implications of all of this for a continued sex positivity. And I’m thinking of the ways that the FOSTA-SESTA laws will potentially impact sex work and queer sexual practices. 
With these current issues in mind, when we meet in Philadelphia, what directions would you like to see the SBPC’s direction take? What is the role of our academic work in relationship to these political problems, and is there a need to rethink or think again about the relationship between research and political practice? In the humanities, there’s starting to be a movement within queer studies toward thinking more groundedly about queer meanings and communities. Are there alliances we might make across disciplines that would be productive to our social scientific approaches? 
There is much work to be done, and I think that the SSSP can be one of the many necessary sites of work necessary in this historical moment.
See you in Philadelphia!
J. Todd Ormsbee
SBPC Division at the 68th Annual Meeting of the Society for the Study of Social Problems
Division-sponsored Sessions
* Session 016: Sexuality, Social Policy, and Harm, organized by Julie Gouweloos, McMaster University. Friday, August 10, 10:30 AM - 12:10 PM, Room: Freedom F. 
* Session 067: CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Sexualities on the Edge, organized by Kathleen A. Asbury, Community College of Philadelphia. Saturday, August 11, 10:30 AM - 12:10 PM. Room: Freedom E.
* THEMATIC Session 104: Abolitionist Theory and Sexual Justice, organized by J. Todd Ormsbee, San Jose State University. Sunday, August 12, 8:30 AM - 10:10 AM, Room: Independence B. 
Sessions Co-sponsored by SBPC
* Session 034: Sexuality, Gender, and the Law I, organized by Lloyd Klein, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY. Friday, August 10, 2:30 PM - 4:10 PM, Room: Independence C. Co-sponsored by Law and Society
* Session 042: Sexuality, Gender, and the Law II, organized by Lloyd Klein, LaGuardia Community College, CUNY. Friday, August 10, 4:30 PM - 6:10 PM, Room: Independence C. Co-sponsored by Law and Society
* Session 058: Relational Power and Privilege in Sex-Gender Systems, organized by Margaret McGladrey, Tufts University. Saturday, August 11, 8:30 AM - 10:10 AM, Room: Freedom H. Co-sponsored by Youth, Aging, and the Life Course
* Session 084: Global Migrations of Sexualities and Disability, organized by Melissa Jane Welch, University of South Florida, and Ying-Chao Kao, Rutgers University. Saturday, August 11, 12:30 PM - 2:10 PM, Room: Salon 10. Co-sponsored by the Disability and Global Divisions
* Session 094: Power and Privilege in Sex-Gender Systems in the Era of Trump, organized by Margaret McGladrey, Tufts University. Saturday, August 11, 2:30 PM - 4:10 PM, Room: Freedom H. Co-sponsored by Youth, Aging, and the Life Course
* Session 115: Sexuality and Bodies I: Frontiers of Gender In/Justice, organized by Madeleine Pape, University of Wisconsin-Madison; presider/discussant: Renee M. Shelby, Georgia Institute of Technology. Sunday, August 12, 10:30 AM - 12:10 PM, Room: Independence B. Co-sponsored by Sport, Leisure, and the Body
* Session 126: Sexuality and Bodies II: Masculinities, organized by Madeleine Pape, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Sunday, August 12, 12:30 PM - 2:10 PM, Room: Independence B. Co-sponsored by Sport, Leisure, and the Body
* Session 143: Sexual and Reproductive Health, organized by Emily Allen Paine, University of Texas at Austin and Stacy Harmon, CDC Foundation. Sunday, August 12, 2:30 PM - 4:10 PM, Room: Freedom G. Co-sponsored by Health, Health Policy, and Health Services and Youth, Aging, and the Life Course
* Session 152: Sexuality, Gender, and Medicine, organized by Emily Allen Paine, University of Texas at Austin and Stacy Harmon, CDC Foundation. Sunday, August 12, 4:30 PM - 6:10 PM, Room: Freedom G. Co-sponsored by Health, Health Policy, and Health Services and Youth, Aging, and the Life Course


CALL FOR SSSP MEETING MENTORS!
The SBPC Division needs volunteers to serve as mentors in the SSSP meeting mentoring program.  This involves pairing a newcomer to the SSSP annual meeting with a more experienced member.  Typically, the mentee and mentor meet for a few minutes during the annual meeting. Mentors usually welcome the newcomer, ask about their interests, assure them that ours is a friendly organization so they ought to feel free to approach anyone and start conversations, and encourage them to attend the business meeting of the division that is closest to their interests.  Past mentors have enjoyed these contacts, and haven’t found them a burden.
Only 6 members of the 130 SBPC members have volunteered to serve as mentors this year. Meanwhile, 12 newcomers haved reported a special interest in the division (and additional requests continue to arrive).  Please consider volunteering to serve as a mentor by completing the form at the following link by Saturday, June 30:
https://www.sssp1.org/index.cfm/pageid/1985/










RECENT MEMBER PUBLICATIONS
* Brodyn, Adriana and Amin Ghaziani. 2018. “Performative Progressiveness: Accounting for New Forms of Inequality in the Gayborhood.” City & Community 17(2): 307-29.
* Coley, Jonathan S. 2018. Gay on God’s Campus: Mobilizing for LGBT Equality at Christian Colleges and Universities. Chapel Hill, NC: The University of North Carolina Press. 
* Crawley, Sara L., and Rebecca K. Willman. 2018. “Heteronormativity Made Me Lesbian: Femme, Butch and the Production of Sexual Embodiment Projects.” Sexualities 21:156-173.
* Ghaziani, Amin. 2018. “What we really mean when we talk about acceptance of gay people.” Los Angeles Times, June 10, p. A25.
POSITION OF INTEREST
The Portland State University Department of Women, Gender, & Sexuality Studies invites applications for a full-time, non-tenure track Senior Instructor I to begin September 15, 2019. This position is a nine-month, renewable appointment with the possibility for continuous appointment and advancement in rank to Senior Instructor 2. The teaching load is 9 courses for the academic year (3 courses/quarter).  The department offers two majors, in Women’s Studies and in Sexuality, Gender and Queer Studies. We seek a colleague who is an experienced instructor and practitioner of feminist activism with particular attention to women of color feminisms, reproductive justice, and community-engaged learning. Teaching experience should include women of color feminist theories, contemporary feminist social justice activism, global reproductive justice, and/or introduction to women’s studies, using an intersectional lens of analysis. Candidates should have experience teaching students from diverse backgrounds, including first generation students, low-income students, students of color, students with disabilities, and queer, trans, and gender non-conforming students. The department especially values candidates whose teaching, community engagement, and scholarship theorize from lived experience, and whose pedagogy is rooted in intersectional feminist praxis and epistemologies that challenge settler colonialism and white supremacy. Responsibilities will include teaching both required courses and electives. Courses may include WS101 Intro to WS, WS305 Women of Color Feminist Theories, WS307 Women, Activism & Social Change, and/or WS369U Global Reproductive Justice. This position will contribute to the long-term vision of the department, and as such there will be opportunities to develop and offer courses in the candidate’s area of specialization.
Link to job description and application:
https://jobs.hrc.pdx.edu/postings/26947