Summer NEWSLETTER SOCIAL PROBLEMS THEORY DIVISION of the Society for the Study of Social Problems MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR Greetings, Social Problems Theory Division Members, I am greatly looking forward to seeing many of you next month inNew York! In this newsletter, you will find information about our division-sponsored sessions for this years conference (P. 5), our2026 award winners (Pp. #2-4), and recent publications of our members (P. 6). Please join us for our Divisions Annual BusinessMeeting on Friday, August 7th, at 12:30 PM in Ambassador III.SSSP is currently undergoing multiple budgetary changes, which we will discuss during the business meeting. Additionally, we will use this time to seek volunteers for our award committees, plan sessions for our 2027 meeting, and present plaques to the winners of our Outstanding Book Award and Junior Scholar Award.OurDivision-Sponsored Reception will be Saturday, August 8th, at7:15 PM in the Gershwin Ballroom. I am pleased to introduce the Divisions Incoming Chair - Morena Tartari. Morena is currently an Associate Professor atNorthumbria University and has been an active member of SSSP. Morenas teaching and research are grounded in social problems theory, and she previously served as chair of the Teaching SocialProblems Division. She has worked closely with our division over the years, and I am greatly looking forward to continuing to work with her in the years to come! See you next month in New York! Joshua H. Stout Illinois State University 1 Joshua H. Stout Social Problems Theory Division Chair 2024-2026 Department of Criminal Justice Sciences, Illinois State University IN THIS ISSUE: Page 2: 2026 Outstanding Book Award Page 3: 2026 Outstanding Student Paper Award Page 4: 2026 Junior Scholar Award Page 5: 2026 Annual Meeting Division-Sponsored Sessions Page 6: Recent Member Publications Editor: Kimberly A. Ingold Summer NEWSLETTER SSSP THEORY DIVISION OUTSTANDING BOOK AWARD Malone Gonzalez, S. 2025. The Secrets of Silence: The Everyday Policing of BlackWomen and Their Stories about Violence. Princeton University Press. In The Secrets of Silence, Dr. Shannon Malone Gonzalez, thoughtfully and with the utmost care, brings us into the daily lives and inner worlds of Black women and girls, with a focus on how everyday policing shapes their lives. Based on extensive ethnography, life history interviews and pre-interview surveys,Malone Gonzalez innovatively theorizes the missing-ness of Black women and girls experiences, and the myriad ways in which they name, share, report or hide the violence that is inflicted on them. Building upon the matrix of violence, this missing-ness, she argues, is due to silence as a matrix, which consists of politics, norms, and sanctions that make it difficult and dangerous for black women and girls to speak about and report violence. Black women and girls, then, are confronted in what Gonzalez theorizes as the space between: spaces where black women encounter and make meaning around our lived experiences of violence from officers and others outside of what is conventionally recognized and known about policing, (8). More than show ing how everyday policing shapes their lives, Malone Gonzalez creatively reveals the limits of conventional research methods for understanding complex social problems by attending to that which we see and refuse to see, hear and refuse to hear, and the implications of these silences. Yet, not all is lost, as Malone Gonzalez demonstrates how gatherings are spaces where Black women can name and discuss these violences inflicted. In doing so, these gatherings serve as a counter to everyday experiences and as a place where Black feminist epistemologies take shape. Beautifully written, Malone also intersperses the book with poetry from these womens stories and makes clear the importance of studying Black women and girls on their own terms. Shannon Malone Gonzalez is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology and a Faculty Researcher at the Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life(CITAP) at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Their research draws from black feminism and critical criminology to examine the relationship between marginality and policingin particular how black women and girls experience, understand, and resist police surveillance and violence. She is especially interested in institutional and communal knowledge production processes used to conceptualize, track, and address police violence and other types of violence on the margins.Shannon is from Jackson, Mississippi where they earned her B.A. from Tougaloo College. She received her M.S. from the University of Pennsylvania and her Ph.D. inSociology from The University of Texas at Austin. COMMITTEE MEMBERS: Lily Ivanova, Victoria Reyes, and Stve Bernardin 2 Summer NEWSLETTER SSSP THEORY DIVISION OUTSTANDING STUDENT PAPER AWARD Melissa is a citizen of the Manitoba Mtis Federation and a descendant of the Turtle Mountain Band ofChippewa. She also has settler lineages includingGerman and English. Melissa grew up in Montana and loves spending time with her family, shooting her bow, traveling, reading, hunting, and hiking with her dog Koy, all of which shape her thinking, writing, research, teaching, and creativity. Broadly, her research examines the structure of everyday, ongoing settler colonialism, and her current project highlights the experiences and knowledges of Native American lawmakers inMontana. Melissa is a Doctoral Candidate inSociology at the University of Missouri and the2026-2028 Charles Eastman Fellow in Native American and Indigenous Studies at Dartmouth College. COMMITTEE MEMBERS: Sione Lynn Pili Lister, Clara Mey, and David C. Lane 3 Summer NEWSLETTER SSSP THEORY DIVISION JUNIOR SCHOLAR AWARD Members of the committee lauded Dr. Stouts scholarship for its timely and compelling contributions to social problems theorizing, specifically noting how it advances a constructionist framework for understanding the intertwined complexities of substance abuse as a social problem. His steady efforts towards advancing public sociology around this issuein the forms of invited presentations, media appearances, and professional reports were cited as a promising new direction in his scholarly trajectory. Finally, the committee also appreciated the breadth and depth of your many contributions to SSSP and the Division, which include more than a decade of mentoring, service, and progressive leadership roles. Joshua H. Stout is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminal JusticeSciences at Illinois State University. His research primarily explores the impacts of, and responses to, drug use in society. Dr. Stouts work has explored the experiences of individuals bereaved by a drug-related death, pointedly examining how this population experiences stigma and engages in various advocacy efforts. He is currently conducting research on the spread of disinformation about fentanyl exposure among first responders, and the abusive practices of Americas TroubledTeen Industry. Joshua is from Durango, Colorado and he received a Ph.D. and anM.A. in Sociology from the University of Delaware, and a B.A. in Criminologya nd Psychology from the University of Denver. COMMITTEE MEMBERS: Brian Monahan and Stve Bernardin 4 Summer NEWSLETTER 2026 SESSIONS SPONSORED BY THE SOCIAL PROBLEMS THEORY DIVISION 5 Summer NEWSLETTER RECENT MEMBER PUBLICATIONS Budd, Kristen M., Heather E. Dillaway, David C. Lane, Manjusha Nair, Marko Salvaggio, andJason A. Smith, eds. 2026. Global Agenda for Social Justice 3. Policy Press. Jurez, Nicols. 2026. When We Fight, We Win!: An Ethnographic Investigation into ClassStruggle Unionism in Higher Education. Social Service Review 100(2):307-45. Lister, Sione Lynn Pili. 2026. "Lessons from the Peripheries: Coloniality, Belonging, andResistance Among U.S. Territorial Peoples." Sociological Forum. Reyes, Victoria. 2026. in Migrant AcademicsNarratives of Precarity and Resilience (Volume 2), edited by Ladan Rahbari and Olga Burlyuk.Open Book Publishers (invited), pp 285-297. Rocha Beardall, Theresa, Eman Ghanayem, and Sione Lynn Pili Lister. 2026. Sociologies ofResistance: Gaza Student Encampments as Sites of Global Indigeneity, Placemaking, andSolidarity. , edited by J. Puriand V. Patil. Northampton, MA. Edward Elgar Publishing. Steele, Paul D. 2026. Civil and Criminal Justice Responses to the Sexual Victimization of AmericanIndian and Alaska Native Children: Contexts, Decisions, and Outcomes. Oxford University Press. Stout, Joshua H. 2026. Punishing Death Dealers: Examining Claims to Expand the DeathPenalty to People Who Deal Drugs. Contemporary Justice Review, 1-12. Thai, Mai. 2026. Kid Cops: What Communities Gain and Lose from Junior Police in Schools.University of Chicago Press. ***Research from this book won the Student Paper Award from SSSP's Social Problems Theory Division in 2019! 6