Weekly Digest #5: Sessions Seeking Papers

Submit your Session Seeking Papers (SSP) by Sunday, Oct. 27th, to be included in our final weekly digest next Tuesday. To submit a Session Seeking Papers, use this form

We currently have 27 SSPs across a variety of exciting themes! Their due dates for abstract submission vary. Please visit our website for the full list of SSPs for SSS 2025. 

For all other submissions (in other words, submissions that are not part of one of the SSPs), please use the SSS Member Portal to submit by November 4th.


Sessions Seeking Papers (as of October 21, 2024)

Race and Education

For this session, we are seeking papers that discuss the historical, contemporary, and future realities of race and education. We are interested in work that critically assesses the role of race, racism, and racial inequality in the social construction of education as a social institution.

Potential paper topics include, but are certainly not limited to:

  • Racial achievement gaps
  • Minority issues in education
  • School funding and resource allocation
  • Critical Race Theory and the institution of education
  • Book banning and its implications
  • Current sociological trends in education
  • Sense of belonging for Students of Color
  • Tracking

If you are interested in this session, please submit an extended abstract to Taylor McElwain (taylormcelwain@vt.edu) by Nov. 1st. In your submission, please also include your name, title, and affiliation.

Racialized Emotions and Racism

Racial threat and negative emotions are regularly used as common explanations of racism in modern scholarship, particularly among white Americans. This panel brings together scholars who broadly assess the relationship between feelings of group or personal threat, racialized emotions and manifestations of racial prejudice among the collective. We welcome empirical and theoretical work to focus our discussion around the role of threat and emotions of all kinds, as well as work that challenges the common presumption and focuses on a range of ethno-racial groups.

If you are interested in participating in this session, please submit your information in a Word document by Wednesday, October 30, if not sooner, to Ashley V. Reichelmann (avr@vt.edu) or Scott Carter (carter@ucf.edu). In your document please include:

1.        Each author’s name, affiliation, position, and email address

2.        Title of the paper

3.        Extended abstract (400-450 words) – Please note that the SSS guidelines suggest, if applicable, that the abstract should be organized with the following section headings: Objectives, Methods, and Findings.

Methods of the Future: Exploring Cyberdeviance

This session will spotlight cutting-edge social science methods for investigating deviant behaviors in digital spaces. Researchers are invited to submit papers introducing innovative approaches to identifying emerging forms of cyberdeviance or offering theoretical frameworks that explain these behaviors. Submissions may also present original methods for data collection and analysis, or creative applications of existing methods. Additionally, papers can explore new or under-researched areas within the digital realm. The session organizer plans to compile selected papers into an edited volume aimed at graduate students and academics. Interested contributors should submit a 200-500 word abstract to Rod Graham (rgraham@odu.edu) by October 30. Please include the abstract in the email body, using “SSS Submission” as the subject line. Each submission should also list the names, titles, affiliations, and contact details of all authors.

Disaster futures and the future of disaster studies

The past 10 years in the United States have featured several extreme events. The United States alone (to highlight just a few) has experienced record-setting wildfires on the east and west coasts, several category 5 hurricanes that have made landfall, catastrophic technological failures, and the first global pandemic in a century. These, and others, have caused society to confront a world of increasing uncertainty. While most public attention has focused almost exclusively on the features of the hazard events themselves, disaster scholarship points to key social the proliferation of mis/disinformation; a rise in anti-intellectualism; and climate change feature prominently as drivers of disasters.

We seek papers to construct a three-session (four papers each) mini-conference at SSS 2025 that focuses on disaster futures and the future of disaster studies. We invite scholars from a variety of research areas to contribute to the interdisciplinary investigation of disaster-related social issues, to share their knowledge, and to help navigate the challenges of our rapidly changing world.

If you are interested in this session, please submit an extended abstract to Adam M. Straub (strauba@rowan.edu) by Nov. 1st. In your submission, please also include your name, title, and affiliation.

Fat Studies/Body Politics, Co-Sponsored by SWS South

This session will highlight scholarship in the general theme of body politics/fat studies. In alignment with the conference theme of “sociology of the future and the future of sociology”, we will highlight papers that consider futures beyond body positivity that imagine a society free from rigid beauty standards and fat oppression. Areas of study may 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.

*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. Please submit materials by October 26th, 2024 via email to byersle@wofford.edu and aprohaska@ua.edu.