SSSP 2026 Annual Meeting
Date: Saturday, August 8
Time: 10:30 AM - 12:10 PM
Membership and Outreach Committee, 2025-26 & 2026-27
Room: Booth Boardroom
Date: Saturday, August 8
Time: 10:30 AM - 12:10 PM
SPECIAL
Session 040: Academic Freedom in the Current Climate: A Conversation with the Scholars at Risk Network
Room: Broadway I
Sponsor: Program Committee
Organizer: Sarah Jane Brubaker, Virginia Commonwealth University
Presenters: Reed Couvillon, Scholars at Risk
Sarah Jane Brubaker, Virginia Commonwealth University
Description: Scholars at Risk has helped thousands of at-risk scholars, documented attacks on higher education in over 100 countries, and advocated for stronger protections for academic freedom worldwide. The theme for their 25th anniversary, “Truth Matters,” is an opportunity to recommit to this work and the values behind it. This session will provide an opportunity to learn more about SAR’s work and ways to increase protection for scholars. We invite SSSP members to come and share their experiences and concerns and work toward solutions in community.
Date: Saturday, August 8
Time: 10:30 AM - 12:10 PM
Session 041: PAPERS IN THE ROUND: Building Collective Wisdom through Intergenerational Scholar Sharing
Room: Majestic Ballroom
Sponsors: Community, Research, and Practice
Labor Studies
Organizer: Leticia Morales, University of Southern California
Description: This session brings together scholars at different career stages to reflect on the value of intergenerational exchange in knowledge production, mentorship, and community building. Presenters explore how sharing experiences across generations strengthens collective wisdom, sustains critical traditions, and nurtures emerging scholars. Topics include navigating academic pathways, fostering supportive professional networks, and leveraging diverse perspectives to reimagine the future of scholarship. By foregrounding collaboration and dialogue, the panel demonstrates how intergenerational engagement enriches research practices, democratizes expertise, and cultivates more inclusive intellectual communities.
Roundtable #1 Title: Session: PAPERS IN THE ROUND: Building Collective Wisdom through Intergenerational Scholar Sharing
Presider:
Leticia Morales, University of Southern California
Papers:
“Digital Lives, Street Realities: Rethinking Abuse and Psychological Well-Being among Street Youth,” Padmore Adusei Amoah, Lingnan University
“Empowering the Vulnerable: Establishing an NGO to Support Marginalized Communities in Ethiopia,” Yirgalem Kiros Weldegerima, Independent Researcher and Community Organizer
“Learning from Academic Life Histories: Intervening on an Intergenerational Deficit in Academic Mentorship,” Lily Ivanova, University of British Columbia
“Lessons from the League of Revolutionary Black Workers for Working-Class Struggle Today,” Walda Katz-Fishman, League of Revolutionaries for a New America and Howard University and Jerome Scott, League of Revolutionaries for a New America
“Living with Stigma: Education and Denotified Tribes in Northern India,” Surbhi Dayal, Indian Institute of Management
“The Pandemic’s Silver Lining: How COVID Improved My Teaching and Mentoring,” Wendy Simonds, Georgia State University
Date: Saturday, August 8
Time: 10:30 AM - 12:10 PM
Session 042: WORKS IN PROGRESS: Environment, Inequality, and Marginalized Knowledge
Room: Majestic Ballroom
Sponsors: Environment and Technology
Poverty, Class, and Inequality
Organizers: Tanesha A. Thomas, Montclair State University
Nicole Kraus, West Texas A&M University
Description: Environments, inequality, and marginalized knowledge are deeply interrelated aspects of social and ecological life, yet inequality shapes who bears the burden of environmental harm and who enjoys its benefits. Indigenous peoples and low-income communities of color are disproportionately exposed to environmental hazards, while wealthier populations have greater ability to influence policy. Marginalized and Indigenous knowledge plays a crucial role in challenging these dynamics. This inclusive session is designed to foster intellectual and community-based connections and to encourage both ongoing and emerging projects.
Roundtable #1 Title: WORKS IN PROGRESS: Environment, Inequality, and Marginalized Knowledge
Presider:
Tanesha A. Thomas, Montclair State University
Papers:
“‘Find Easily, Eat Easily, Live Easily’: Food, Foraging, Farming, Isanness, and Civility in Thailand’s Northeast Region,” Rachel Engel, University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa
“Beyond the Victim/Perpetrator Binary: Subaltern Political Ecology and Human-Elephant Conflicts in Odisha, India,” Lalatendu Keshari Das, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee
“Feminist Environmental Justice in Practice: Women as Agents of Change in the Niger Delta’s Oil Conflict,” Oyeintarimoboere P. Azebi and Yvonne A. Braun, University of Oregon
“Global Capitalism, Extractivism, and the Age of the Anthropocene: Challenges from Indigenous Women of the Global South and Their Implications for the Marxist-Feminist Deglobalization Movement,” Ligaya Lindio McGovern, Indiana University
“Visual Case Study of Natural Green Spaces in Chula Vista, CA: Otay Valley Regional Park,” Kevin Guerrero, San Diego State University & University of California, Irvine
“Women, Food Sovereignty and Postharvest Management in Northern Ghana,” Sabina Mensah, Hulda Sakyi and Yvonne A. Braun, University of Oregon
Date: Saturday, August 8
Time: 10:30 AM - 12:10 PM
THEMATIC
Session 043: Anticolonial Social Movements
Room: Manhattan
Sponsor: Sociology, Social Work, and Social Welfare
Organizer, Presider &
Discussant: Agata Pacho, Purdue University
Description: Anticolonial social movements have been a significant force in struggles for freedom and self-determination. Emerging from diverse regions around the world, these movements have been driven by demands for cultural sovereignty, political independence, and the dismantling of oppressive systems. They have employed a range of strategies—from nonviolent resistance to armed struggle—to challenge colonial rule and advance the rights of colonized peoples. Colonization, in its many forms, relies on processes such as objectification, commodification, corporatization, financialization, criminalization, militarization, and bureaucratization. Papers in this session examine how anticolonial movements have resisted the colonization of lifeworlds historically and how they continue to shape struggles in the present.
Papers:
“‘We Are the Answer’: Missing and Murdered Indigenous Peoples Advocates Defending Indigenous Lifeworlds and Resisting Coloniality,” Sara Tehrani, University of Central Florida
“Complicity and Resistance: Japanese Feminism and Relational Power in the 1970s,” Riko Kobayashi, The University of Chicago
“Decolonizing Western Biomedicine: Exploring the Role of Traditional Medicine as a Health Social Movement,” Barbara Sena, University of Bergamo
“Grassroots Empowerment Innovations in African Cultures: Drawing on Participatory Research Initiative,” Warner Woodworth, University of Utah
“Stewardship as Resistance to Colonization Forces,” Diana Papademas, SUNY Old Westbury
Date: Saturday, August 8
Time: 10:30 AM - 12:10 PM
THEMATIC
Session 044: CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Medicalization and Surveillance of Gender and Sex
Room: Melville
Sponsors: Gender, Sexual Behavior, Politics, and Communities
Health, Health Policy, and Health Services
Organizer &
Presider/Discussant: Ronald E. Bulanda, Miami University
Description: This session focuses on the ways gender and sex have been medicalized and how medicalization and surveillance enact and enforce inequalities. In this critical dialogue, presenters engage attendees in a discussion of how institutions function as systems of control and consider ways we might reimagine these structures.
Papers:
“A Theoretical Evaluation of the Minority Stress Model: A Nursing Perspective,” John A. Fuller, Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing, Emory University
“‘Connected to Both Places’: How Community-Building Shapes the Mental Health Care Experiences of Transgender Adolescents and Young Adults,” Emily A. Flesher and Meredith G. F. Worthen, The University of Oklahoma
“Exploring the Healthcare Experiences of Intersex Individuals in the United States,” Ridwan Islam Sifat, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
“In the Name of Fair Play: The Sport of Policing Gender and Sex in Women’s Athletic Competitions,” Kathryn Henne, Australian National University
“Investigating the Medical Cistem: Researcher Positionality as Resource and Vulnerability,” Jennifer Hites-Thomas, SUNY Oswego
“The Structural–Relational Ecosystem of Inequity (SREI): An Intersectionality-Informed Model of Harm in Health and Social Service Systems,” Dejamarie Crozier, Howard University; An Insightful Journey and Rita Jacobs, Howard University
Date: Saturday, August 8
Time: 10:30 AM - 12:10 PM
Session 045: CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Exploring and Resisting Academic Ableism
Room: Palace
Sponsors: Disability, Mental Wellness, and Social Justice
Educational Problems
Organizer &
Presider/Discussant: Melinda Leigh Maconi, Moffitt Cancer Center
Description: Despite the existence of policies mandating accessibility in education, learning institutions of all types continue to perpetuate and reify ableism. Educational policies are not made with accessibility in mind but are instead created for certain bodies, minds, and abilities, with ad hoc accommodations later offered—often inconsistently—to those whose needs do not fit these norms. People with disabilities can and do resist this marginalization, yet they often remain within institutions designed to uphold ableism. This critical dialogue explores both the oppression of people with disabilities in academic settings and the forms of resistance that emerge in response.
Papers:
“‘Schools Don’t Give a Fuck about Mental Health’: Mental Health Discourse in a Public High School,” Karlyn J. Gorski, The University of Chicago
“Accessing Help through a Top Canadian University’s Not-So-Accessible Accessibility Office: Retracing a Disabled Doctoral Student’s Accessibility Advising Encounters,” Justin Chen, University of Toronto
“College, Ableism, and the Systemic Exclusion of People with Disabilities,” Sydney Ruskey, Wilkes University
“Dismantling Ableism in the Qualitative Research Process: Developing Guidelines for Understanding Lived Experiences of Disabled Communities,” Jimin Sung, Columbia University
“Diverging Debt Trajectories: Disability and Student Borrowing in Higher Education,” Jenna Maree P. Wong, The University of Texas at Austin
“In Support of the Masked Classroom: Enhancing College Student Engagement, Leadership, and Access through Course Masking Policies,” Atticus M. Wolfe, Agnes Scott College
“Intercepting Sanism in Higher Education,” Gillian V. Bryant, Arizona State University
“Limitations in the Field: On Disability, Reflexivity, and Embodiment in Ethnography,” Allison J. Wigen, Boston University
Date: Saturday, August 8
Time: 10:30 AM - 12:10 PM
Session 046: CRITICAL DIALOGUE: Right to Resist: Counter-Hegemonic Agency and Emancipatory Anti-colonial Political Praxis
Room: Pearl
Sponsor: Critical Race and Ethnic Study
Organizers &
Presiders/Discussants: C. Michael Awsumb, Northwest Missouri State University
Watoii Rabii, Oakland University
Marta M. Maldonado, Oregon State University
Description: You will not be emancipated by the benevolence of an oppressor”—and so, how shall we resist? This session explores questions and lived experiences of unapologetic and transformative political praxis against oppression and injustice (e.g., colonization, violence, genocide, crimes of the powerful, racism, ethnocentrism, sexism, structural violence) and the political systems that sustain them. Of particular interest are papers that engage the question: “Who determines the ‘right’ or ‘acceptable’ way to resist your oppressor?
Papers:
“The Radical Sociological Imagination: Mapping Decolonial Possibility through Mutual Aid Practice in Political Witchcraft and Kashmiri Scholar-Activism,” Apoorvaa Joshi, Rutgers University
“Right to Resist on Screen: Decolonial Feminism and the Politics of Defiance in Moroccan Cinema,” Hind El Fellak and Yassine Ben Abou, Ibn Tofail University
“Becoming Agentic Bodies Through Embodied Performances: Feminist Memory Work against Political Sexual Violence in the 2019 Chilean Uprising,” Lidia Yáñez Lagos, University of Manchester
“Expanding Antiracist Agency in Organizations,” Fernando A. Ospina and Ruth T. Butters, Western Michigan University Homer Stryker M.D. School of Medicine
“Lessons from the Peripheries: Resistance among U.S. Territorial Peoples,” Sione Lynn Pili Lister, Arizona State University, Honorable Mention of the Global Division’s Student Paper Competition
“Protection, Care, and the ‘Right Way’ to Advocate: Racial Resistance in Chicago High Schools,” Ana Vasan, The University of Chicago
“Radicals and Revolutionaries: Women, Guns and Emancipation,” Adriana Leela Bohm, Delaware County Community College
“Is This Love or a New Power Struggle?: Malian Women’s Perceptions of Chinese and Russian Influence under Coloniality,” Kadidja Vohou-Diaby, Kennesaw State University
Date: Saturday, August 8
Time: 10:30 AM - 12:10 PM
Session 047: Mass Incarceration and Perpetual Punishment II
Room: Plymouth
Sponsor: Crime and Justice
Organizer: Kristen M. Budd, The Sentencing Project
Presider &
Discussant: Jennifer M. Carpenter, Georgia State University
Description: This series on mass incarceration examines the intersection of mass incarceration and the U.S. criminal legal system’s overreliance on perpetual punishment. Perpetual punishment is broadly defined to include the pains of incarceration, extreme sentencing, denials of legal relief, and other collateral consequences resulting from a criminal conviction. This session focuses on punishment, collateral consequences, reentry, and the challenges of living in community after incarceration.
Papers:
“Circles of Support for Formerly Incarcerated Citizens,” Esme Lezama Ruiz and Betsy Miller, Marquette University, Eugene Nelson, Project Return and Ed de St. Aubin, Marquette University
“Evaluating Participant Insights on Substance Use Treatment and Reentry Preparation in Jail,” Alennys Gabriella Taveras Seda, Leslie Cuddy, Michael Caudy and Jill Viglione, University of Central Florida
“Examining and Comparing the Specific Needs of Transgender and Gender Nonconforming Individuals after Criminal Justice Involvement,” Jennifer M. Carpenter, Georgia State University
“Indignant Citizens: Strategizing Belonging by Family Members of People on the Sex Offender Registry,” Maggie Buckridge, University of California, Irvine, Chrysanthi Leon, University of Delaware, Ashley Kilmer, Towson University and Lucy Nistler, University of Delaware
“Life in the Impenitentiary: An Autoethnographic Study of Mass Incarceration, Perpetual Punishment, and Convict Consciousness,” Robert Northman, Portland State University
