News

Professor Ruha Benjamin has been travelling extensively in anticipation of the upcoming release of People’s Science:Bodies and Rights on the Stem Cell Frontier. She recently reported on her visit to BIOPOLIS–a research center in Singapore focusing on biomedical research, “where you’ll find buildings called Nanos, Genome, Helios, Chromos, Proteos, Centros, and Neuros. But what about other things that impact health? Isos (equality), Nomos (laws), Praxis (everyday activity) to name a few…” You can follow her on the People’s Science Facebook page (http://www.facebook.com/peoples.science).

It is increasingly clear that understanding health also means understanding economic and political policies, and beginning in Fall 2013, the Sociology Department will be joined by Prof. Joseph Harris as Assistant Professor, with a specialization in Global Health and Development.  Prof. Harris is a 2012 graduate of the University of Wisconsin, with a 2005 Master of Public Affairs from the Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton, and consulting experience across three continents for organizations ranging from the World Bank to UNDP and the Grameen Foundation. His research agenda positions him perfectly to do the kind of comparative political analysis of health care and health policy that will contribute to a distinctive BU approach to comparative political and economic study of health and health care.  As a specialist in Thailand and extensive experience elsewhere in Asia, Dr. Harris will also contribute to Asian Studies and to International Relations at BU.

Patterns of Empire

The American Library Association’s publication Choice publishes hundreds of reviews of academic publications, but only a few make their annual list of “outstanding” titles.  Professor Julian Go’s latest book, Patterns of Empire, has been included in this year’s list, recognizing its overall excellence and originality. The New Left Project recently interviewed Professor Go about his book.

Patterns of Empire is available for purchase from Cambridge University Press.

At its annual meeting, November 1-3, 2012, in Rochester, N.Y., the Society for Phenomenology and the Human Sciences (SPHS) honored George Psathas, Emeritus Professor of Sociology (Boston University) for his contributions to phenomenological sociology and ethnomethodology with a special session and a Festschrift, Interaction and Everyday Life, edited by Frances Chaput Waksler and Hisashi Nasu, published by Lexington Press (Rowman and Littlefield) 2012. Contributors to the Festschrift were nineteen internationally known scholars from the United States, Germany, South Korea, Switzerland, and Japan. In their contributions they noted how, in various ways, Psathas had influenced and informed their thinking and their work.

Please see George Psathas’s website for more information.

Professor Nancy Ammerman will speak as one of three panelist for BU’s Road to Washington: Conversations on the 2012 American Elections. Professor Ammerman will join Professor Randall Ellis (Economics) and Professor David Glick (Political Science) to weigh in on the role religion will play in the 2012 Elections.

When: Tuesday, October 30th, 2012 at 7:00PM
Where: Metcalf Trustee Ballroom, School of Management, 9th Floor.

For more information, please see flyer.

EDIT: Due to Hurricane Sandy, this panel has been cancelled.

Professor Nancy Ammerman was a guest on WGBH’s “Boston Public Radio” on Monday, October 15th, discussing a new survey showing a significant increase in the number of religiously unaffiliated people.

Listen to the Audio.
About the Segment.

Japonica Brown-Saracino

On Tuesday, October 30th, African American Studies’ Fall Lecture Series welcomed the Sociology’s Japonica Brown-Saracino. Professor Brown-Saracino presented “The ‘Real People’: Race, Class, Ethnicity, and the Politics of Preservation in Gentrifying Neighborhoods” at 5pm in the African American Studies Program Building, 138 Mountfort Street, Brookline.

For more information on Professor Japonica Brown-Saracino, please visit her faculty page. For more information on the African American Studies Lecture Series, please see their events page.

On Wednesday, October 24th at 5:00 pm, the Undergraduate Sociology Association (USA) hosted Sociology students and faculty for a meet and greet.  Students were invited to meet their professors and get to know fellow Sociology majors.

When: Wednesday, October 24th at 5:00 pm

Where: Sociology Lounge, 96 Cummington Street, 2nd Floor

For more information about the Undergraduate Sociology Association, please click here.

Professor Ruha Benjamin was a featured panelist at the New Repertory Theatre and WGBH Spotlight Symposium entitled “Exploring David Mamet’s Comedy ‘Race’” on Sunday, October 21st, 2012. The panel was  moderated by Kim McClain from WGBH TV’s “Basic Black,” with co-panelists Professor Walter Early Fluker and Professor Lydia Diamond.

When: Sunday, October 21st, 2012 at 6 p.m.
Where: Arsenal Center for the Arts, 321 Arsenal Street, Watertown, MA  02472

To reserve complimentary tickets please e-mail tickets@newrep.org.
For more information please see New Reperatory Theatre’s website.

Peter Yeager

Sally Simpson

With his colleague Sally Simpson at the University of Maryland, Yeager has obtained funding from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), U.S. Department of Justice, to help BJS design and implement the country’s first ongoing data collection system for violations of federal laws by individuals and organizations in business and the professions.  The two-year project will involve developing a classification system for white collar offenses, a framework of the stages of enforcement employed in pursuing them, and tools for consolidating federal agencies’ diverse accounting systems into standardized statistical files for use in research and public policy work.  Yeager began his work on this prospect with a grant from the American Sociological Association’s Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline with which he interviewed legal and information technology officials at several federal agencies and collected information on their data management systems.