Citings and Sightings

The Chronicle of Higher Education ran a piece this week in their ‘Community College’ section from sociologist Chad M. Hanson, who “Fled a Humorless University for a Sanctuary of the Liberal Arts.”

Hanson writes about finding a fulfilling career beyond the University of Texas system, where he worked as a research associate:

A successful career at a community college depends on shifting one’s perception. Students — even the snarling ones with baseball caps pulled down over their eyes and baggy pants hanging off their posteriors — must become the focus of one’s work life and the source of one’s job satisfaction. Regardless of whether they want or feel as if they need to take your courses, ill-prepared and unmotivated students show up in your classroom, and that fact often presents a challenge to new teachers. Even so, the good ones eventually realize that making ill-prepared and unmotivated students a priority is a luxury of sorts. At universities, educators take pride and pleasure in the challenge of securing grants to pay for new lines of research, but I have the freedom to make the surly, often-ill-prepared kid in the back row the challenge of my professional life, and that suits me.

Hanson provides a thoughtful reflection about what pushed him to pursue this type of career in sociology…

Community-college teaching can be lucrative. I received a pay increase when I left the university and took up teaching at a two-year college. But that’s not why I left my job conducting research. I left because, though the work was meaningful, it was humorless. Near the end, as I sat in front of the computer in my office, I could feel the hours and days slipping by without the kind of uninhibited laughter that makes your eyes water and your cheeks ache. I longed for that. I was surrounded by brilliant people who took themselves far more seriously than anybody should, no matter how many ways you prove yourself or your intelligence. Once on a coffee break, I caught a look at myself in a mirror — short-sleeve shirt, bold-striped necktie, and a pocket protector lined with upscale pens and mechanical pencils. I looked like a ball of rubber bands wound too tight to be useful to anyone. I knew I needed a change.

Read more.

Inside Higher Ed reports on a recent publication from the American Sociological Association about the job market for new Ph.D.s.

“New Ph.D.’s in sociology appear to have a healthy job market in which to land positions, based purely on the numbers. But an analysis released by the American Sociological Association also points to a potential mismatch in specialties, as hiring committees appear to be much more enamored of criminology than are sociology graduate students.”

The up-side…

“The overall picture is quite positive. The association had listings in 2006 for 1,086 unique positions, 610 of them for assistant professors. During that same year, 562 Ph.D.’s were awarded in sociology. The report notes that not all of the posted positions in any year are filled by new Ph.D.’s or at all, but given that there are also postdoctoral positions, positions for which no rank is specified, and positions not included in the ASA job listings, the outlook is encouraging for new Ph.D. recipients.”

The down-side…

“Where things are slightly less certain is in the area of specialties. More than one third of the assistant professor positions did not specify a subfield. But the top subfield specified (nearly three times more than the runner up) was criminology/delinquency, and the sixth most popular subfield was a related one, law and society. The concern of those who prepared the report is that evidence suggests grad students are focused elsewhere.”

Read more.

Charles Tilly, legendary sociologist and Columbia University professor has passed away at age 78. The New York Times obituary cited Tilly’s unique combination of historical and quantitative methods in his work. A prolific scholar, Tilly published 51 books and more than 600 scholarly articles.

Excerpts from the Times obituary:

“In an interview on Thursday, Adam Ashforth, a professor of anthropology, political science and sociology at Northwestern University, called Dr. Tilly ‘the founding father of 21st-century sociology.’ He particularly praised Dr. Tilly’s seamless synthesizing of his own work on witchcraft and politics in South Africa. Dr. Ashforth also mentioned Dr. Tilly’s dizzying output of books, which had been running at more than a book a year for more than two decades.”

“’It was exhausting keeping up with him,’ Dr. Ashforth said. ‘We’ll now have a chance to catch up with our reading.’”

“On April Fool’s Day in 1969, The New York Times asked leading intellectuals what they considered foolish. Dr. Tilly answered, ‘One way I’d like to improve social life is to get a guy to stop for five minutes or one minute or 10 seconds and listen to what the other guy says.’”

UPDATE: In January 2012, we caught up with Jessie Daniels for her latest picks in the best of the best documentaries, and got replies from several other professors representing different courses. Please check out the new lists! http://thesocietypages.org/specials/documentaries/

What makes students happier than watching movies during class time? — A new blog post provides some beneficial guidance in selecting films for specific sociological topics.

A recent update to the blog titled ‘Thinking at the Interface‘ provides a thorough and exemplary list of films to use in sociology classes. The list is organized around common themes of introductory sociology courses including the sociological imagination, research methods, race, ethnicity, and gender, just to name a few!

Link to the list…