19/08/2024 | Press release | Distributed by Public on 19/08/2024 23:11
UMass Amherst was well represented at the 119th American Sociological Association (ASA) Annual Meeting, which convened in Montreal on Aug. 9.<_o3a_p>
ASA President Joya Misra, Distinguished Professor of sociology and public policy at UMass, delivered the meeting's keynote address, "Sociological Solutions: Building Communities of Hope, Justice, and Joy." As Misra wrote in her welcome message, the speech sought to "focus attention on how sociologists use sociology to help build a better world, through our research, our engagement with communities, our teaching, and our public sociology. And that better world is necessary."<_o3a_p>
Misra also organized plenary sessions on academic freedom, transnational feminist solidarities and abolition feminisms, as well as over 60 thematic, special and book-forum sessions for the conference.<_o3a_p>
Also at the annual meeting, Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, professor of sociology and director of the Center for Employment Equity at UMass Amherst, received the 2024 Robert M. Hauser Distinguished Scholar Award. Presented by the ASA's Inequality, Poverty and Mobility Section, the award celebrates the field's most fundamental accomplishments across a career.<_o3a_p>
Many UMass scholars and alumni also participated in various panels, presentations and discussions over the five days of the conference on topics ranging from trans families to mental health.<_o3a_p>
UMass Amherst plays a guiding role in the ASA, the largest sociological association in the world, as the university is home of the association's 2024 president and its flagship journal, the American Sociological Review, which is co-edited by Tomaskovic-Devey, and professors of sociology David A. Cort and Laurel Smith-Doerr.<_o3a_p>