SSSP 2026 Annual Meeting
Date: Sunday, August 9
Time: 8:30 AM - 10:10 AM
Session 066: Class Across the Lifecourse: Birth, Health, Aging, Death
Room: Belasco
Sponsor: Poverty, Class, and Inequality
Organizer &
Presider: Nicole Kraus, West Texas A&M University
Description: This session focuses on the intersection of class and demographics ranging from the beginning to the end of the lifecourse.
Papers:
“Conditional Mobility and Global Class Reproduction: The Case of International Students,” Geeti Anwar, University of South Florida
“Gender in Emerging Adulthood: Perceptions and Experiences of Masculinity and Femininity in Oklahoma,” Afra Sayara Rahman, Michigan State University
“Long-Term Health Consequences of Gang Life,” Avelardo Valdez, Arizona State University
“Socioeconomic, Urbanicity, and Intersectional Inequalities in Sexually Transmitted Infections among Adults with Substance Use Disorder: Evidence from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health,” Carol A. Lee, The University of Texas at Arlington
“The Influence of Childhood Residential Instability and Neighborhood Quality on Teen Parenthood,” Anna Maria Santiago and Iris Margetis, Michigan State University
“Who Gets Heard Later in Life? Access, Aging, and the Experiences of Older Deaf and Hard-of-Hearing Adults,” Ashley Butler and Sara Terrana, Adelphi University
Date: Sunday, August 9
Time: 8:30 AM - 10:10 AM
THEMATIC
Session 067: Resisting Colonization of the Family
Room: Broadway I
Sponsors: Family, Aging, and Youth
Gender, Sexual Behavior, Politics, and Communities
Organizer &
Presider: Ami MH Frost, University of Oklahoma
Description: The day-to-day work of living within a family system often shields individuals from recognizing the influence of colonization in their midst. Yet rather than existing outside the family, colonizing forces are exerted both on and within family life. This session explores the gendered objectification, commodification, and financialization of families through divisions of unpaid and paid labor, processes of gender socialization and rejection, concerted cultivation, and care work. The politicization and control of bodies, sexual behavior, gendered roles, and related dynamics are often socialized and enacted within families, yet families can also serve as sites of resistance to these forces.
Papers:
“Beyond Core and Balance: How Families Frame Fun in Contemporary Parenting Culture,” Julie A. Mikles-Schluterman and David Ward, Arkansas Tech University
“‘She Might Wear Her Jordans Better Than Me!’: Masculine Embodiment and Negotiation in Mixed-Gender Masculine-Masculine Relationships,” Isabel F. Levin, Brown University and Kathryne M. Young, The George Washington University
“Growing Up Too Early and the Burden of Policing: Unpacking Adultification, Police Encounters, and Legitimacy in Low-Income Black Communities,” Abass Muhammed, University of Delaware
“Interraciality as a Family Affair: An Intersectional Analysis of East Asian Immigrant Families’ Responses to East Asian–Black Unions,” Olivia Y. Hu, University of Pennsylvania
“‘Family Authority, Formation, and Cohesion’: The Heritage Foundation’s Patriarchal Agenda,” Brandie S. Pugh, Faith Burrill and Ansley Shamblin, West Virginia University and Ava Carcirieri, Delaware Alliance Against Sexual Violence
“A Paradox of Power: White Women, Traditionalism, and Political Agency in the American New Right, 1950s – 2000s,” Evangeline McDonald, University of West Georgia
Date: Sunday, August 9
Time: 8:30 AM - 10:10 AM
THEMATIC
Session 068: No Man Behind the Curtain: The Post-Modern Imperial Power
Room: Broadway II
Sponsor: Program Committee
Organizers: Alexandrea Ravenelle, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Barbara Katz Rothman, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Presider: Barbara Katz Rothman, The Graduate Center, CUNY
Discussant: Alexandrea Ravenelle, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Description: The forces of colonization in the current era go beyond the classic Empire, with its image of a single emperor as ruler. Profit, Domination and Coercion, as our meeting theme stresses, cover more and more arenas of life, from the very gates of life itself, birth and death colonized by Biomedical Industries, to our daily work, our education, our values coming under the colonizing forces of the new post-industrial world. This thematic will address these processes and how they are shaping the world in which we live
Papers:
“THE BIOMEDICAL EMPIRE: Bringing Medical Sociology into the Contemporary World, Studying the Gates of Life,” Barbara Katz Rothman, The Graduate Center, CUNY
“Human Capitalization of Children and Financialization of Parenting,” Nina Bandelj, University of California, Irvine
“Polyemployment and the Fragmentation of the Lifeworld When Meaning is Split Across Gigs,” Alexandrea Ravenelle, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
“Strong Ties or Strong Arms?: Vulnerability, Coercion, and Profits in Multi-Level Marketing Work,” Nicole Christine Muffitt, University of Illinois Chicago
Date: Sunday, August 9
Time: 8:30 AM - 10:10 AM
THEMATIC
Session 069: People Have the Power?: Community Power and Community Decision-making
Room: Broadway III
Sponsor: Community, Research, and Practice
Organizer: Sarah E. Stanlick, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
Presider &
Discussant: Paul Draus, University of Michigan–Dearborn
Description: The papers in this session explore how power operates at the community level, who represents a community, and how communities build the power to influence decision-making. The communities examined in these studies vary and include coalitions, neighborhoods, schools, cities, and other collective groups. All serve as sites of contested power and exemplify communities’ recognition of, and responses to, social problems.
Papers:
“‘If You Put It on a Map, It Means a Lot More’: Place-Based Youth Participatory Action Research at an Urban High School,” Lauren E. Ashby, Syracuse University
“Community Power in Brooklyn: A Half-Century of the Good, Bad, and U,” Jerome Krase, Brooklyn College, CUNY and Judith N. DeSena, St. John's University
“Putting It All on the Map: A Community Storytelling Project in Detroit,” Paul Draus, University of Michigan–Dearborn
“The People’s Purse: Building Trust and Community through Participatory Budgeting,” Brittany Keegan, Virginia Commonwealth University - L. Douglas Wilder School of Government and Public Affairs, Victor Tan Chen, Virginia Commonwealth University and Matthew Slaats, Richmond City Council
“Toward Community-Led Redevelopment: The Kingsbridge Armory Campaign and Reconfiguration of Urban Governance,” Gladys Chiku Mbugua, Fordham University Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Date: Sunday, August 9
Time: 8:30 AM - 10:10 AM
Session 070: Racial Politics and Resistance in the Midst of Settler Colonialism I
Room: Manhattan
Sponsors: Conflict, Social Action, and Change
Critical Race and Ethnic Study
Organizers: Foroogh Mohammadi, Acadia University
Sara Tehrani, University of Central Florida
Presider: Sara Tehrani, University of Central Florida
Description: Only recently have Ethnic and Racial Studies and Indigenous Studies engaged in sustained dialogue about how the racial state has functioned as a settler colonial state. This session examines how historical and contemporary racial politics and social movements confront and resist the intertwined structures of settler colonialism and racial capitalism. It highlights the work of racialized movements in exposing, challenging, and disrupting ongoing colonial violence, racialized dispossession, and carceral regimes.
Papers:
“Filling the ‘Hollow’ of Chineseness: Feeling Ethnic Identity through Practice,” Charlotte Wang, Columbia University, Winner of the Critical Race and Ethnic Studies Division’s Student Paper Competition
“U.S. Panethnicity and Its Effect on Political Alignments of Latino/as and Asian Americans,” Christine M. Capili, University of La Verne
“Fort Lewis Indian Boarding School Report: A Case Study in Sexual and Gender-Specific Violence and Targeted Destruction of Indigenous Kinship Systems,” Deanne L. Grant, Fort Lewis College
“Slow Violence, Uncare, and the Nantucket Wampanoag,” Stephanie A. Bohon and Shaylee Hodges, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
“Revolutionary Melancholia toward Reclaiming Life: Fanon’s Politics of Endurance and the Practice of Sumud in Palestine,” Uzma H. Chowdhury, Teachers College, Columbia University
“Role Collapse: The Israeli Settler–State Compact and Pathways to Hybrid Domination in the Occupied West Bank,” Joseph Rafael Kaplan Weinger, University of California, Los Angeles, Winner of the Conflict, Social Action, and Change Division’s Student Paper Competition
Date: Sunday, August 9
Time: 8:30 AM - 10:10 AM
Session 071: Social Problems Theory: Past to Present
Room: Melville
Sponsor: Social Problems Theory
Organizer, Presider &
Discussant: Joshua H. Stout, Illinois State University
Description: This panel brings together social problems theory scholars to reflect on the history, evolution, and current state of this theoretical tradition. The Social Problems Theory Division Outstanding Book Award winner will also participate, highlighting their contributions and future directions in social problems theory.
Panelists:
Joel Best, University of Delaware
R.J. Maratea, Saint Francis College
David C. Lane, Illinois State University
Date: Sunday, August 9
Time: 8:30 AM - 10:10 AM
THEMATIC
Session 072: Colonization, Inequality, and the Changing Classroom
Room: Palace
Sponsor: Teaching Social Problems
Organizers: Morena Tartari, Northumbria University
Laurie J. Linhart, Des Moines Area Community College
Presider: Laurie J. Linhart, Des Moines Area Community College
Description: This session examines how educational institutions and classroom practices are shaped by broader structures of inequality and power. While traditional discussions of colonization in education focus on historical and epistemic domination, the papers in this session extend the concept to examine multiple expressions of structural inequality in education – from racialization and spatial segregation in schooling to policy reforms that structurally exclude adult learners and the growing influence of artificial intelligence in the classroom. At the same time, several contributions explore pedagogical strategies aimed at fostering more ethical, supportive, and critically engaged learning environments. Together these papers illuminate the dialectic between educational systems that reproduce social problems and the pedagogical practices that work to disrupt them.
Papers:
“Local School Zoning as a Spatialized Form of Social Reproduction,” Karen Manges Douglas and Rin Ferraro, Sam Houston State University
“The Straining of Comprehensive Student Support in Scottish Further Education: A Primary Barrier to Retention under Austerity,” Ema Inoue, Osaka University of Economics
“Mind the Gap: A Critical Analysis of the Relationship between Racialization, Poor Mental Health, and Academic Performance in K-12,” Taylor J. Hall, Wilkes University
“The Impact of Timing of Expanded Adverse Childhood Experience Exposure on Academic Performance in a Sample of Child Protective Service–Involved Youth,” Rashad Freeman, Indiana University School of Public Health-Bloomington
“The Art of Gentle Teaching: Establishing Rigorous Learning Environments with Care and Compassion,” Stephanie M. Baran, Xavier University of Louisiana
“The Colonization of Our Lifeworld (the Classroom),” Gillian Niebrugge Brantley and Patricia Lengermann, The George Washington University
Date: Sunday, August 9
Time: 8:30 AM - 10:10 AM
Session 073: Mass Incarceration and Perpetual Punishment III
Room: Plymouth
Sponsor: Crime and Justice
Organizer &
Presider: Kristen M. Budd, The Sentencing Project
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 the socioeconomic drivers and consequences of punishment, the criminal legal system, and mass incarceration.
Papers:
“Declining Incarceration: Examining the Socioeconomic, Political, and Policy Drivers of Black and White Male Incarceration Rates,” Gift Onwuadiamu, University of Delaware
“Partner Incarceration and Women’s Income Packaging,” Tanajia D. Moye-Green, Stanford University
“Poverty Penalty: How the Cash Bail System Consistently Violates the 14th Amendment,” Nyra Thakkar, Cambridge Centre for International Research
“Social Workers with Criminal Records and Their Navigation of the Social Work Licensure Process,” Ke’Ana Robinson, Philadelphia Mental Health Care Corporation-Family Training and Advocacy Center, Margo Campbell, Widener University and Casey Bohrman, West Chester University
“The Cost of Freedom: Financial Precarity following Long-Term Imprisonment,” Kristen M. Budd, The Sentencing Project
“The Greatest Show on the Dirt: The McAlester, Oklahoma, Prison Rodeo as Punishment and Performance in the Making of Carceral Spectacle,” Maggie León-Corwin, The University of Oklahoma and Michelle L. Estes, Rowan University
