BU Undergraduate Sociology Association
Fall 2025 calendar
11/03 Monday 3:30-5:00pm @ SOC B63 (100 Cummington Mall)—Professor Jarrod Shanahan
The Rikers Island Trilogy: Social History, Prison Ethnography, and Activist Scholarship
Dr. Jarrod Shanahan discusses his Rikers Island Trilogy, a unique project that approaches a single site—New York City’s Rikers Island penal colony—from three distinct methodologies. Shanahan will discuss Captives: How Rikers Island Took New York City Hostage (Verso, 2022), a social history of the island; City Time: On Being Sentenced to Rikers Island (NYU Press, 2025), an immersive ethnography of daily life for its sentenced men co-authored with David Campbell; and Skyscraper Jails: The Abolitionist Fight Against Jail Expansion in New York City (Haymarket, 2025), an activist-scholarship intervention into debates about the closure of Rikers and the future of incarceration in New York City, co-authored with Dr. Zhandarka Kurti.
Jarrod Shanahan is an associate professor of criminal justice at Governors State University.
Past events
Spring 2025:
- 04/14 Monday 5:30-6:30pm @ Sociology Lounge—Professor Curington
- 03/26 Wednesday 5-6pm @ Sociology Lounge—Professor Kupchik
Fall 2024:
- 10/02 Wednesday, 5-6pm @ Sociology Lounge—Professor Pryma
- 10/22 Tuesday, 5-7pm @ PHO 906—Sociology Department Mixer
- 10/23 Wednesday, 6:30-7:30pm @ CAS 211—Professor Swartz
- 10/30 Tuesday, 5-6pm @ Howard Thurman Center—Professor Puri
- 11/07 Thursday, 5-6pm @ Sociology Lounge—Graduate Student Panel
- 11/14 Thursday, 5-6pm @ Sociology Lounge—Thesis Writer’s Panel
- 12/04 Wednesday, 5-6pm @ Howard Thurman Center—Professor Zabala Ortiz
- 12/12 Thursday, 5-6pm @ Sociology Lounge—Marcus Shaw
