News and Events

Richard Sennett has been awarded The European Craft Prize for 2008.  The award is voted by craft unions and craft workshops in the EU.  Richard will receive the prize in Cologne from the German Minister of Labour in November.

Allison McKim has been selected as the winner of the 2008 Dennis Wrong Award for her paper entitled, "Getting Gut-Level: Punishment, Gender and Therapeutic Governance."

The GSAS Honors and Awards Committee has selected Allison McKim as the winner of a 2008 Mainzer Summer Fellowship.  The Mainzer Summer Fellowship is given annually to outstanding advanced doctoral students.  The award supports study in the areas of love and sexuality, gender studies, or the psychology of love and sexuality.

Jen Heerwig, Brian McCabe, and Devyani Prabhat have each been awarded a Herbert Menzel Memorial Fellowship.

Jenna Appelbaum has been selected as the first Georgette Bennett Fellow in Applied Sociology.  Jenna will continue her dissertation research on post-genocidal "gender justice" in Rwanda.  She will spend her tenure as a Bennett Fellow at a Rwandan nongovernmental organization called HAGURUKA, which provides legal aid to Rwandan women and children whose rights have been violated. 

Professor Guillermina Jasso was the dinner speaker at the annual dinner of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society, held this year in New York City on March 29, 2008.  Her talk was titled, "Discerning Ethnicity and Its Operation in the New Immigrant Survey."

Jen Heerwig and Brian McCabe received the Seymour Sudman Student Paper Award from the American Association for Public Opinion Research (AAPOR) for their paper entitled "Social desirability bias in estimated support for a Black presidential candidate." As part of the Sudman Award, they will be invited to present their paper at the annual conference of the AAPOR conference in New Orleans, Louisiana, May 15-18.

The Sociology Department is pleased to announce two new faculty hires, Gabriel Abend and Colin Jerolmack.

Heat Wave, Eric Klinenberg's award-winning book, is now a play. Two theater companies, Pegasus Players and Live Bait, have combined to stage a theatrical adaptation that runs from February 25 to April 6 in Chicago. Click here to read more about the production.

Guillermina Jasso was appointed to the Census Advisory Committee of the American Statistical Association.  This committee joins with the Census Advisory Committees of three other organizations -- the American Economic Association, the American Marketing Association, and the Population Association of America -- to form the Census Advisory Committee of Professional Associations (CACPA), which operates as an advisory body to the Director of the U.S. Census Bureau.

The Eastern Sociological Society has awarded Mitchell Stevens's recent book, Creating a Class:  College Admissions and the Education of Elites, the Mirra Komarovsky Book Award for 2008.

The Eastern Sociological Society has named Ashley Mears the co-recipient of the Rose Laub Coser Dissertation Award.

Monika Krause and Ashley Mears  were each selected to receive  2008-2009 Dean's Dissertation Fellowships.

Aaron Major has accepted a position as Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University at Albany, State University of New York.

In December, NPR's "This American Life" featured new research from Eric Klinenberg's current book project, "Alone in America." Click here to hear Klinenberg's story on what happens when someone dies alone in Los Angeles, and doctoral student Allison McKim's interview with a woman who enjoys living alone in New York City but feels social pressure to find a partner.

According to this year's academic rankings in The Chronicle for Higher Education, NYU's Sociology Department is ranked second on a list of sociology departments based on research criteria.  The index is based on publication of books, journal articles, citations, grants, honors to faculty.

Guillermina Jasso has been selected as a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).  This is the group that publishes the journal Science.  Along with election to the National Academy of Science, AAAS stands as one of the most prestigious honors for academic scientists--with only a few social scientists being picked each year.

Guillermina Jasso delivered a keynote address at the Annual Conference of the Research Data Centres Network of Canada, meeting in Halifax, Nova Scotia, on 12-13 October 2007.  The  theme of this year's conference was "Life Course Transitions of Children and Youth," and the title of her talk was "If I Were a Child: Immigration and Its Transitions from a Child's Eye."

On Wednesday, October 10, 2007, David Schleifer presented findings from his dissertation on a panel about trans fats of the American Institute of Wine and Food, which is an organization for food industry professionals, called "Where did all the trans fats come from?  Where have all the trans fats gone?"  The panel itself was called "What Will Happen To My Doughnut? How To Cope With The Trans Fat Ban," and included staff from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.

On Tuesday, October 2, Craig Calhoun gave the Birley Lecture - named after the founder of the City University of London. It was entitled "Humanitarianism: Progress, Charity, and Emergencies."

Jean Yeung and Caroline Persell have been awarded an NSF grant.  The project is entitled "Intergenerational Racial Stratification and Children's Cognitive Achievement."  In addition, Jean was awarded an NSF grant for a project entitled "Continuity and Change in American Economic and Social Life:  The PSID 2007 -2011" and a grant from NICHD for the project "Transitions from Preschool to High School:  Family, School, and Neighborhood."

Yen-Mei Miao, a recent Ph.D., has taken a position as assistant professor in the department of sociology at National Cheng Chi University (NCCU), one of the top universities in Taiwan.

Sarah Kaufman received an NSF dissertation grant that enables her to travel in order to observe death penalty trials throughout the US.  Sarah's dissertation is an ethnographic study of death penalty sentencing, focusing on how the presentation of the defendant's character is differently orchestrated by defense and prosecution as they argue for life or death.

Alumnus Aaron Kupchik's book Judging Juveniles, based on his dissertation, received the Michael Hindelang Award of the American Society of Criminology.

Meghan Falvey published a cover article in n+1 magazine's issue 5, "Woman, The New Social Problem." It also appeared on their website: http://www.nplusonemag.com/newsocialproblem.html

Four GSAS Spring Awards went to sociology graduate students:

Jenna Appelbaum - 2007 Andrew Sauter Fellowship
Alton Phillips - 2007-2008 Robert Holmes Travel/Research Award for African Scholarship
Suzanne Risley - 2006-2007 Dean's Outstanding Dissertation Award
Owen Whooley - 2007 GSAS Summer Predoctoral Fellowship

Dorith Geva has accepted a position as a Harper Schmidt Collegiate Professor within the University of Chicago Society of Fellows.

Jean Yeung has been elected Secretary-Treasurer of the Children and Youth section of the ASA.

David Schleifer published a short article about trans fats on the web site of N+1.

The Theory Section of the ASA has elected Monika Krause Student Representative on Council.

Vivek Chibber’s award-wining book, Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialization in India (Princeton: 2003), is the subject of a review symposium in the latest newsletter of the ASA’s Comparative Historical Section.   The book is reviewed by Lis Clemens, Jeffrey Paige, and Leo Panitch, with a response by Chibber.

Danielle Bessett was awarded the 2007 ESS Rose Laub Coser award for outstanding dissertation proposal in the area of family or gender and society. 

Craig Calhoun recently gave the Ernest Gellner Memorial Lecture at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). The title was “Cosmopolitanism and Nationalism”.

Eric Klinenberg has been awarded a fellowship at Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences for the 2007-8 academic year.

The Board of Directors of the South/North Development Initiative(SNDI) has elected Juan Corradi president of the organization for 2007-08. South North Development Initiative (SNDI/South North) is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization based in New York City. South North works together with Sur Norte Inversión y Desarrollo, an Argentinean sister organization created in 1999. It mainly focuses on strengthening Social and Productive Inclusion Programs by promoting new instruments for socio-economic development. 

Mikaila Arthur has accepted a position as a Visiting Assistant Professor at Hamilton College.

Jui-Chung Allen Li has accepted an associate research scientist position at RAND.

Miranda Martinez has accepted a position as Assistant Professor at Brooklyn College.

Junmin Wang has accepted a post-doctoral fellowship on China's Political Economy at Indiana University for the 2007-08 academic year

Rebecca Glauber has accepted a position as Assistant Professor at University of New Hampshire.

Kate Strully has accepted a position as Assistant Professor at SUNY Albany.

Miriam Ryvicker has accepted a position as Research Associate at the Center for Home Care Policy and Research, Visiting Nurse Service of New York.

Claudio Benzecry has accepted a position as Assistant Professor at University of Connecticut.

Neal Caren has accepted a position as Assistant Professor at University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill.

Sarah Damaske has been awarded a 2007 Woodrow Wilson Women's Studies Dissertation Fellowship.  She is one of seven fellows to receive this award, which supports Ph.D. candidates in the humanities and social sciences whose work addresses topics of relevance to women and gender in interdisciplinary and original ways.

Kathleen Gerson has been elected President of the Eastern Sociological Society for the 2008/2009 academic year.

Richard Arum has won a Fulbright New Century Scholars Award to conduct a comparative study of the American and Israeli higher education systems during the 2007-2008 academic year.

NYU's sociology department has been ranked number three in research productivity in a new index reported on by the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Ashley Mears has been named a 2006 Mainzer Fellow to the Center for Gender Studies at Cambridge University.
 
David Schleifer was a recipient of the Fall 2006 GSAS Dean's Dissertation Fellowship for his dissertation Getting Better For You: Dietary Fats Uncertainty and Innovation.

Mikaila Arthur, Kathryn Pfeiffer and David Schleifer were recipients of NSF Dissertation Awards for 2006.

Miriam Ryvicker was the recipient of the National Institute of Health Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality Dissertation Grant Award for 2006.

Richard Sennett has been awarded the Hegel Prize (given every three years by the German city of Stuttgart).  Details about this prestigious honor can be found at: http://www.nyu.edu/public.affairs/releases/detail/1344

Troy Duster was named a Silver Professor.

Dalton Conley has been elected to the American Sociological Association Council.