To submit a Session Seeking Papers (SSP), please submit a session here (SSP is an option in the session Type drop-down). We encourage members to submit their SSPs by Wednesday of each week to appear in the following week’s digest. Our weekly digest will continue until October 1st.
For any individual submissions to SSS 2027, please click here.
Transforming Grief
This session will engage with scholarship on how individuals, groups, societies, and institutions transform grief and other powerful emotions into something else. We will highlight scholarship that use sociological methods and theories to study interdisciplinary topics about transforming grief into things like advocacy organizations, collective action, social movements, social networks, social change, personal growth and empowerment, meaning-making, written work, peace projects, and work and occupations. Individuals, groups, societies, and institutions of interest include, but are not limited to, suicide loss survivors, survivors of trauma, grieving mothers, memorials and memorialization, public spaces, and informal and formal politics of grieving.
In your document, please include: (a) the title of the paper, (b) names, affiliations, and contact information for each author, and (c) an extended abstract. Extended abstracts should be approximately 400-500 words and organized with the following three section headings: Objectives, Methods, and Findings. These section headings may not apply to all submissions, so authors may modify as needed.
If you are interested in participating in this session, please submit your information in an MS Word document by September 28 to klebert@ncsu.edu and kjohnson2@coastal.edu.
**Please note that information provided here is what will appear in the program, so please include your name, affiliation, and contact information exactly as you want it to appear in the program.
Panel: Teaching Applied Sociology
This proposed panel is seeking panelists on teaching applied projects and/or service-learning/community-engagement courses. This panel is designed to support interested attendees in assignment or course design. This may also be an opportunity for panelists to share their knowledge and experiences. Various topics related to teaching such courses may be covered, including syllabus and assignment design, successes and challenges, institutional support, and/or community-engagement online, etc.
Two or more participants may submit a single proposal to co-present. Graduate students are also invited. If you have any questions, please contact avleap@soc.msstate.edu with what you’re thinking about, and we can discuss. Please email by 9/25/2026 with a title, an abstract describing the type of course(s) and/or applied projects you’ll be discussing, and the presenters’ contact information.
Site of Memory, Sites of Struggle: Remembering and Reckoning with the Past
This session brings together interdisciplinary scholars examining the context of memorialization and the social processes through which communities remember, interpret, and contest histories of racial violence and injustice. As public debates over monuments, museums, historical markers, commemorations, and truth-telling initiatives continue to unfold, questions of whose histories are remembered, how they are represented, and to what ends have become increasingly consequential. Presenters will explore memorialization as a site of meaning-making, power, and collective memory, highlighting how acts of remembrance shape identities, public narratives, community relationships, and possibilities for social change.
All paper submissions should include: (a) the title of the paper,* (b) names, affiliations, and contact information for each author,* and (c) an extended abstract. Extended abstracts should be approximately 300-450 words and organized with the following three section headings: Objectives, Methods, and Findings. These section headings may not apply to all submissions, so authors may modify as needed.
**Note that information provided here is what will appear in the program, so please include your name, affiliation, and contact information exactly as you want it to appear in the program by 9/27/2026 to Sarah Gaby (gabys@uncw.edu) and Ashley Reichelmann (avr@vt.edu).
Aging in the U.S. South
Population aging is reshaping the United States, and the experience of growing older is embedded in distinct social, cultural, economic, institutional, and historical contexts. The U.S. South provides an especially important setting for understanding aging across the life course. The region is home to a large and diverse older population and encompasses rural communities, small towns, suburbs, and major metropolitan areas. It is also a region marked by distinctive histories of family and community life, migration, religion, work, race and ethnicity, and social institutions. At the population level, Southern states include many of those with shorter life expectancy and substantial health needs, while communities across the region vary considerably in access to health care, services, transportation, and other resources that support well-being in later life.
This session is organized by the Southern Population Aging Research Center (SPARC), a newly created Demography & Economics of Aging Center funded by the National Institute on Aging (NIA, P30AG097132). SPARC brings together researchers at the University of Maryland – College Park, the University of Alabama at Birmingham, and the University of Maryland – Baltimore County to advance interdisciplinary research on population aging in the U.S. South.
We invite any scholarship focused on aging in the U.S. South and welcome a broad range of sociological questions, perspectives, methods, and substantive areas. Possible topics include health and well-being across the life course, rural, suburban, and urban aging, contemporary family and household forms, marriage and partnering, singlehood and living arrangements, kinship and intergenerational relationships, gender and aging, caregiving and networks of care, race and ethnicity, migration and mobility, work and retirement, religion and community life, social connection and isolation, aging in place, health care and service access, dementia and cognitive aging, mortality and longevity, and end-of-life experiences, death, dying, and bereavement. Papers may focus on a particular Southern population, community, state, or setting. They may also examine variation within the South or compare the South with other regions.
In keeping with the 2027 SSS theme, “Interdisciplinary Sociology: The Bridge to Engagement,” the session welcomes quantitative, qualitative, and mixed-methods studies that cross disciplinary boundaries. Aging touches nearly every domain of social life, creating natural opportunities for conversation among sociology, demography, gerontology, public health, social work, psychology, anthropology, and related fields. The session will conclude with a discussion of the distinct challenges and opportunities of aging in the U.S. South. By bringing together a broad range of scholarship, the session aims to foster new conversations about what it means to grow older in the South and deepen our understanding of how Southern contexts shape aging and well-being across the life course.
All paper submissions should include: (a) the title of the paper,* (b) names, affiliations, and contact information for each author,* and (c) an extended abstract. Extended abstracts should be approximately 300-450 words and organized with the following three section headings: Objectives, Methods, and Findings. These section headings may not apply to all submissions, so authors may modify as needed.
Submit here: Call for Papers! “Aging in the U.S. South”
** Please note that information provided here is what will appear in the program, so please include your name, affiliation, and contact information exactly as you want it to appear in the program by 9/29/2026. Contact Christine Armstrong Mair (christine_mair@umbc.edu) with any questions about this session.
Mini-Conference: Hazard and Disasters – an interdisciplinary field
Organizers: Adam M. Straub (strauba@rowan.edu); Laura Becker (lauralb@vt.edu)
The study of hazards and disasters is inherently interdisciplinary, due to the intersection of social, biophysical, and built systems. Research from social sciences and humanities such as sociology, geography, anthropology, psychology, political science, philosophy, English, communications, and social work provides a rich tapestry of perspectives, theory, and methods. Disaster scholarship also requires the inclusion of physical sciences like meteorology, hydrology, marine sciences, agricultural sciences, climatology, seismology, and many more. Lastly, because of the ways in which our built environment is key to understanding disaster processes, engineering, city planning, and knowledge of various technologies and utilities are essential.
This mini-conference will highlight a variety of ways in which scholars practice interdisciplinary work across the field. We call for papers that highlight these intersections to showcase the value, utility, and potential of interdisciplinary work in the study of hazards and disasters.
You may submit extended abstracts of individual papers for potential inclusion in the Disasters Mini-conference. These abstracts will be organized into sessions by members of the organizing committee based on common themes. All regular paper submissions should include:
(a) the title of the paper.
(b) names, affiliations, and contact information for each author, and
(c) an extended abstract. Extended abstracts should be approximately 300-450 (max 405_ words and organized with the suggested three section headings: Objectives, Methods, and Findings.
(d) please email a copy of your extended abstract to strauba@rowan.edu (with SSS 2027 – disasters Mini Conference in the subject line) by 9/29/2026.
**Please note that information provided here is what will appear in the program, so please include your name, affiliation, and contact information exactly as you want it to appear in the program.
Sociology at a Crossroads: Trends, Tensions, and Threats
Papers in this session will address a variety of current trends, tensions, and threats that are fundamentally challenging how professional sociology in the U.S. identifies itself as an academic discipline and what it views as its role in social life. Some of the more serious threats emanate primarily from outside sociology itself, notably in the form of hostile political attacks on what the discipline teaches or researches. Less visible, but not necessarily less consequential, is the diminishing status of sociology and sociological research from the standpoints of external funding agencies and/or institutions of higher education. There are also internal forces within professional sociology that present challenges as well. For example, intellectual trends continue to divide many practicing sociologists, whether they be methodological/theoretical differences in conducting research or debates regarding whether we should be a value-free or value-laden enterprise. Organizational trends, such as with respect to DEI in higher education and its impact on sociology, also produce splits within the discipline. Relatedly, recent internecine squabbles in professional associations such as the American Sociological Association also serve to demonstrate the deleterious impact of contemporary challenges to academic sociology.
In light of the above, these present-day challenges have arguably pushed academic sociology in the United States to an intellectual and/or institutional “crossroads” of sorts. Consequently, some decisions may have to be made, willingly or unwillingly, on how to collectively carry the sociological project in the United States into the future. Overall, where the discipline currently stands and where we might go from here (however authors personally define these two issues) will be the key themes of the papers in this session.
All paper submissions should include: (a) the title of the paper,* (b) names, affiliations, and contact information for each author,* and (c) an extended abstract. Extended abstracts should be approximately 300-450 words and organized with the following three section headings: Objectives, Methods, and Findings. These section headings may not apply to all submissions, so authors may modify as needed.
** Please note that information provided here is what will appear in the program, so please include your name, affiliation, and contact information exactly as you want it to appear in the program by 9/27/2026 to Brad Nash (nashb@appstate.edu).
Fat Studies/Body Politics
This session will highlight scholarship in the general theme of body politics/fat studies. Fat studies and body politics align perfectly with the conference theme of “interdisciplinary sociology: the bridge to enlightenment”, as the discipline transcends scholarly boundaries, encompassing sociology, women’s studies, public health, psychology, biology, political science, media studies, and beyond. We will highlight papers that used innovative, interdisciplinary methods and use traditional and/or cutting edge theories to study topics that broadly include: Fat Studies, Fat sexualities, Fatness & institutions, and Fatness as an Identity; Fat Activism; Health at Every Size (HAES); Bodies as they intersect with gender,
sexuality, race, class, religion, ability; Body politics; Colonizing and Decolonizing Bodies; Representation & visual culture; Dieting and Food as they relate to bodies; Fashion as it intersects with gender, sexuality, race, class, religion, ability, size; Disciplining/Policing bodies, Size Discrimination; and Bodies, borders, and boundaries (transnational bodies).
All paper submissions should include: (a) the title of the paper,* (b) names, affiliations, and contact information for each author,* and (c) an extended abstract. Extended abstracts should be approximately 400-450 words and organized with the following three section headings: Objectives, Methods, and Findings. These section headings may not apply to all submissions, so authors may modify as needed.
**Please note that information provided here is what will appear in the program, so please include your name, affiliation, and contact information exactly as you want it to appear in the program by 9/25/2026 to aprohaska@ua.edu.
JEDI Mini-Conference: How Does Changing the Name Change the Game?
Session 1: How Does Changing the Name Change the Game? U.S. Perspectives on Participation, Access, and Belonging in Sociology
Description: We invite papers that examine how changing institutional, disciplinary, and political contexts are reshaping conversations about
participation, access, and belonging within the U.S. sociological context.
Session 2: How Does Changing the Name Change the Game? Global Perspectives on Participation, Access, and Belonging in Sociology.
Description: We invite papers that explore participation, access, and belonging from international and comparative perspectives, highlighting diverse institutional, cultural, and disciplinary contexts.
All paper submissions should include: (a) the title of the paper,* (b) names, affiliations, and contact information for each author,* and (c) an extended abstract. Extended abstracts should be approximately 300-450 words and organized with the following three section headings: Objectives, Methods, and Findings. These section headings may not apply to all submissions, so authors may modify as needed.
**Please note that information provided here is what will appear in the program, so please include your name, affiliation, and contact information exactly as you want it to appear in the program by 9/25/2026 to kaseide@davidson.edu.
Note: SSS policy requires that all participants listed in the program be current members of SSS and be registered for the annual meeting. You may join/renew your SSS membership and pre-register for the conference in the Membership Portal.