Because our department always seems to be celebrating something, Dean Jim Parente often asks, “What manner of Bacchanalia goes on in Sociology this week?” Well, it wasn’t exactly bacchanalia (that’s Izze’s sparkling clementine juice, I’ll have you know), but the denizens of the society pages enjoyed a fine party Wednesday at Wing Young Huie’s supercool gallery, The Third Place.  It was the perfect space and moment to thank our friends, commemorate our final Minnesota issue of Contexts magazine, and to begin turning the (society) page.

We were honored to feature a sampling of Wing’s photographs in our final issue, which nicely punctuates a line tracing the sociological imagination of great artists, social entrepreneurs, and cultural observers — Sebastião Salgado’s photography; the art of Anne Taintor and Harvey Pekar; and, the wit and wisdom of rock critic Chuck Klosterman, humorist Dylan Brody, and magazine entrepreneur Eric Utne. Editing Contexts was always intellectually stimulating, but it was positively thrilling to engage such work with the sociological enterprise.

As for the party, we had a great turnout, tons of fun, and a fitting tribute to a project that brought together so many good people in so many capacities the past few years.* Doug, Letta, and I feel humbled and grateful to have worked with so many brilliant contributors and colleagues at Contexts, the American Sociological Association, and around the world. We only wish we had the budget to fly you to beautiful Minnesota for an enjoyably brisk winter’s night. As you can probably guess, though, it won’t be too long at all before we’ll have another big announcement, celebration, and (yes) some measure of bacchanalia to share with the new TSP crew. Just drop us a line if you’d like an invite.

*If you squint real hard you can see folks like Linda Henneman of ThinkDesign (who did amazing work putting our pages together); national board members and contributors like Monte Bute and Andrew Lindner; undergrad students like Sweet Al Casey; grad board alums such as Wes Longhofer, Hollie Nyseth, Suzy McElrath, Jesse Wozniak, Sarah Shannon, Kyle Green, and Kia Heise; good university friends like Elizabeth Boyle, Rachel Schurman, Michael Goldman, Teresa Swartz, Ann Miller, Alex Rothman, Ann Meier, and Mary Drew; and, plenty of family and friends, including Harper Inea, 2051-2054 Contexts editor.