GMU Public Sociology Associate Graduate Conference 2014

[Roll Right]

I wanted to share an opportunity with all of you. The graduate students (including myself) at George Mason sociology put on a conference every year. This conference is focused on public sociology and seeks to engage a multitude of academic disciplines and publics in discussion and debates over contemporary social problems. We usually have between 75 and 100 participants, and the presentations and discussions are quite good.

 

This year, we are discussing the problem of environmental justice and climate change. There are many other sub-topics which fall under this broad issue, however. Sub-topics include: 

 

• Environmental Racism, Sexism, & Classism 
• Political Ecology (or Economy) & Climate Change 
• Human Landscapes & Consumption 
• Cities & the Sharing Economy 
• Weather Events and Disaster Recovery 
• Immigration, Security, & Risk 
• Sustainable Development & Environmental Activism 
• Indigenous Social Movements & Nature Rights 
• Public Sociology, Pedagogy, and Practice 
• And more… 

I invite any graduate students who do research in these areas to submit a paper to our conference. Here is the flier which advertises the conference and provides more information regarding submissions: http://gmupublicsoci.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/2014-cfp-pub-soc-conference-jb4-1.pdf

 

Also, the GMU Public Sociology Association is working with the International Network of Scholar Activists (INoSA) and the New Faculty Majority (NFM) to plan and host a Public Movement Assembly (PMA) which will focus on the issue of precarious labor in the academy. At this meeting we plan to address issues such as the exploitation of graduate student labor, adjunct faculty labor, tenure and non-tenure faculty labor, and non-faculty labor. We will also be discussing the neoliberalization of the university in relation to this, and efforts will be made to develop a way to confront this process of neoliberalization.

 

This event is tentatively scheduled for the evening before the 2014 GMU Public Sociology Graduate Conference. It will likely take place in Arlington, VA. I'll update this thread with more information when I am able to.

 

If any of you wish to be involved in this PMA, or know of graduate student and faculty groups who are making similar efforts, please let me know via private message so we can talk more.

 

 

Thanks for your time.