BU Sociology at ASA 2025
120th Annual Meeting: Reimagining the Future of Work
August 8-12, 2025 | Chicago, Illinois | #ASA2025
The 120th Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association (ASA) starts this week! This year’s ASA will be in Chicago from August 8th to the 12th. It provides the opportunity for professionals involved in the scientific study of society to share knowledge and new directions in research and practice.
BU Sociology faculty and graduate students will be represented throughout the 600 programmatic sessions that provide a scholarly outlet for more than 3,000 research papers, over 4,500 presenters, and 5,000 attendees. Here’s where you can find us:
FACULTY
Japonica Brown-Saracino:
The City at 100
Mon, August 11, 10:00 to 11:30am, East Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Floor: Lobby Level/Green, Plaza Ballroom B
The 2025 Meeting of the American Sociological Association in Chicago happens to fall on the hundredth anniversary of the release of The City by Park, Burgess, and McKenzie, providing an auspicious occasion to consider the legacy of this early manifesto for urban research, and specifically urban research in Chicago. Along with other foundational urban texts like The Philadelphia Negro (1899) and Twenty Years at Hull House (Addams 1910), The City laid out a set theoretical puzzles, methodological challenges, and social problems to be tackled by social scientists looking to use the city as a “laboratory” for answering pressing questions of their day, and inspired generations of urbanists who came after them. In this session, presenters will consider the afterlives of this volume. We ask not only what still resonates and what might be better left behind, but also how ideas from The City are relevant not only to contemporary Chicago, but also portable to those doing urban research in geographic and temporal contexts vastly different from those studied by Park, Burgess, and McKenzie.
Deborah Carr:
30252 – Racialized Health Injustice. “Evaluating Structural and Individual-Level Influences on Black and White Older Adults’ End-of-Life Treatment Preferences” (D. Carr, co-author). Sun, August 10, 8:00 to 9:30am, West Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Floor: Lobby Level/Green, Crystal C.
Sociology of Aging and the Life Course (SALC) Mentoring Reception and Discussion. “Tips and Tricks for Publishing Your Work” (D. Carr). Sunday, August 10, from 7:30—9:00 pm. West Tower, Hyatt, Ballroom Level/Gold, Regency A.
40804 – How to Publish in Medical Sociology Journals (D. Carr, presenter). Mon, August 11, 2:00 to 3:30pm, East Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Floor: Concourse Level/Bronze, Michigan 1B.
41009 – Singlehood and Mental Health (D. Carr, discussant). Mon, August 11, 4:00 to 5:30pm, East Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Floor: Concourse Level/Bronze, Randolph 1A.
Celeste Curington:
I will be receiving two book awards (The Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities’ Oliver Cromwell Cox Book Award for Anti-Racist Scholarship and the section of Race, Gender and Class Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Book Award), I am on a panel (I’ll Labor How I Choose: Queering the Framework of Futuristic Laboring Practices) and I organized a session (Global African Migrations, Anti-Blackness, and Intersectional Justice).
Saida Grundy:
Elected to serve on ASA’s 2026 and 2027 Committee on Committees from September 1, 2025 to August 31, 2027.
Alya Guseva:
I am presenting a paper “Moralizing Consumption in Wartime Ukraine” on Saturday, August 9. 8:00-9:30 am in a panel on Discerning Consumers across Race, Class, and Moral Divides.
Ya-Ching Huang and I are also receiving Honorable Mention for the 2025 ASA Consumers and Consumption Section Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award for our paper “The Moral Economy of Severe Scarcity: How Considerations of Deservingness Shape Cloth Mask Distribution Practices in the Midst of a Global Health Crisis,” Journal of Cultural Economy in the Consumers and Consumption Business meeting on Sun, August 10, 1:00-1:30 pm.
Joe Harris:
Elected to serve as Chair-Elect of the ASA Sociology of Development Section.
Sarah Miller:
I’m presenting my paper, “It Happens Sideways”: Intersectional Inequalities and the Paradox of Anti-Bullying Policy on the panel: The Rules Are Meant to Be Broken: Discipline, Punishment, and Resistance in Childhood and Adolescence. Mon, August 11, 10:00 to 11:30am, East Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Floor: Concourse Level/Bronze, Randolph 1A.
Jane Pryma:
My research will be part of two panels:
Saturday, August 9, 2025, 8 AM-9:30 AM I will be presenting a paper in the Medical Sociology Section’s panel “Is there a Doctor in the House? Updating the Medical Sociology Agenda around Doctoring”
Sunday, August 10, 2025, Noon-1:30 PM my co-authored paper will be presented in a Knowledge Session panel on “Knowledge: Data, Risk, and Knowledge in Health Policy”
Jyoti Puri:
I will start my term as Chair of the Global and Transnational Sociology section. Additionally, I am chairing the WEB Du Bois award committee this year and will present the award at the ceremony.
30108. Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Council Meeting. 7:00-7:45am, Sunday August 10th
30521. Section on Global and Transnational Sociology Business Meeting. 11:00-11:30am, Sunday August 10th
30880. Section on Global and Transnational Sociology.
Decolonial Feminisms and Queer Solidarities
Swissotel, Concourse Level, Zurich A, Sunday August 10th, 2:00-3:30pm
Patrick Sheehan:
Sun, August 10, 2:00 to 3:30pm. 30828 – Cultures and Meanings of Work in the Precarious Age, East Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Floor: Ballroom Level/Gold, Grand Hall J.
This panel will explore the evolving cultures and meanings of work amidst increasing worker precarity in the United States. Recent trends have seen a significant rise in unionization efforts alongside considerable repression of initiatives aimed at improving work-life balance and enhancing diversity and inclusion. In response, this discussion will focus on themes such as the consequences of platform capitalism, overwork, the reimagining of ideal worker norms through the lenses of race, class, gender, and age, and workers’ efforts to resist oppression at micro, meso, and macro levels (from the Great Resignation to #HotLaborSummer). Panelists will approach these topics from various perspectives, including broader themes of racial capitalism and neoliberalism to provide a comprehensive understanding of how work is being redefined and reproduced in contemporary society. The session aims to offer insights into the causes of these changes, their implications for individuals and organizations, and potential pathways forward.
Jessica Simes:
I organized a Thematic Panel: Reimagining Work Under Mass Incarceration: Exploring Barriers and Opportunities. Saturday, August 9, 2-3:30pm (90 min). East Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Floor: Ballroom Level/Gold, Grand Hall J
Ana Villarreal:
Book Forum – The Two Faces of Fear; Violence and Inequality in the Mexican Metropolis. Sun, August 10, 2:00 to 3:30pm, West Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Floor: Lobby Level/Green, Crystal A. More details here: https://tinyurl.com/26afwmmk
The book also won the 2025 Outstanding Book Award from the Peace, War, and Social Conflict Section of the American Sociological Association (ASA).
Pamela Zabala Ortiz
20264. Section on Race, Gender, and Class. Global African
Migrations, Anti-Blackness, and Intersectional Justice
West Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Ballroom Level/Gold,
Acapulco, Saturday August 9th, 8:00-9:30am
21028. Thematic Session. Latinx Professionals: An Intersectional
Lens on Professional Pathways. “How Afro-Latinx Professionals Navigate Ethnoracial Exclusions”
East Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Ballroom Level/Gold, Grand
Hall J, Saturday August 9th, 4:00-5:30pm
30251. Section on Racial and Ethnic Minorities. Shifting Racial
Boundaries and Politics. “Depends on the Form, Depends on the Day: On Dominican Racial
Categorization and Identification”
West Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Lobby Level/Green, Crystal
B, Sunday August 10th, 8:00-9:30am
GRADUATE STUDENTS/ALUMNI
Ya-Ching Huang:
I will be presenting my paper, “Cultural Meanings of Childhood and Care Provision in Pediatric Palliative Care,” scheduled on Sunday, August 10, 2:00 – 3:30 pm, West Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Floor: Ballroom Level/Gold, Toronto.
Alya and I will be receiving the Honorable Mention for the Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award at the Section on Sociology of Consumers and Consumption Business Meeting, scheduled on Sunday, August 10, 1:00 – 1:30 pm, West Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Floor: Ballroom Level/Gold, Regency B.
Yasemin Girgin:
I’ll be presenting my paper, “The Rise of Attention Capital as Legitimacy Broker,” in the Organizations, Occupations, and Work Section’s session “The Future of Work” on Monday, August 11, at the East Tower of the Hyatt Regency Chicago (Concourse Level/Bronze, Randolph 3), from 4:00 to 5:30 pm.
Kazi Mukitul: Monday, August 11th from 2:00-3:00pm, Table 11: Gender & Health (40820: Section on Sociology of Sex and Gender Roundtables), East Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Ballroom Level/Gold, Grand Ballroom A.
Blaine Smith:
I am presenting my paper, “Drag and the Political Economy of Queer Nightlife”, at a paper panel in the section on sexualities: Tue, August 12, 10:00 to 11:30am, West Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Floor: Ballroom Level/Gold.
I am also a panelist on the sexuality section’s Simon-Gagnon Lifetime Achievement Award Panel: Tue, August 12, 2:00 to 3:30pm, West Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Floor: Ballroom Level/Gold.
Sara Snitselaar:
Receiving the Section on Medical Sociology’s Roberta G. Simmons Outstanding Dissertation Award. 21063 – Section on Medical Sociology Awards Ceremony and Reeder Address. Sat, August 9, 4:30 to 5:30pm, West Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Floor: Ballroom Level/Gold, Regency D.
Allison Wigen:
I am presenting a paper draft, “Limitations in the Field: On Disability, Reflexivity, and Embodiment in Ethnography,” in the Qualitative Methods panel Saturday, August 9 at 10:00 AM, West Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Bronze Level/C Floor, Comiskey. I am also presiding over an Organizations, Occupations, and Work Roundtable on “Arts and Creative Work,” Tuesday, August 12 at 8:00 AM, East Tower, Hyatt Regency Chicago, Gold Level/B Floor, Grand Ballroom A.