In August 2023, we launched First Publics as an online space for exploring the politics, pedagogy, and practice of teaching as public sociology with a Dialogue with ASA’s then-President Prudence Carter about the educative power of sociology (thanks to a generous introduction from TSP Editors Doug Hartmann and Chris Uggen). We followed that conversation up with a roundtable of responses from five prominent scholars and teachers in the field to Dr. Carter’s address at the annual ASA meetings. Our fledgling team of faculty and grad students were excited about our new venture, but unsure whether others would find value in what we envisioned for First Publics .

Since then we have published 23 Reflections, 13 Class Notes, eight Dialogues, and many more Connections. We have worked hard to solicit content that we think will be of interest to our readers, and have recently seen an uptick in unsolicited contributions. In addition to publishing on a wide array of topics related to teaching as public sociology, we’ve curated three Series so far (Intro to Sociology, Teaching Theory, and Engaging Elections). By the end of 2024, we had nearly 10,000 views. While not an astronomical number, we were delighted that people other than our team were reading and engaging with our content. We have been further encouraged in our commitment to reflecting deeply on the classroom as an essential and powerful site for public sociology in receiving the Carla B. Howery Teaching Enhancement Fund Grant this year to support our fourth Series, which will focus on “Teaching Methods as Public Sociology.” 

In short, there’s a lot to celebrate about how far we’ve come in building First Publics as a community of practice around teaching as public sociology. At the same time, we are still working toward several goals that we feel are central to our mission.

Last spring, our team engaged in a self-audit of the content on First Publics to assess how well we have done in publishing a diversity of voices and collaborating across the uneven landscape of higher ed institutions. We determined that 67 percent of our authors so far are people that we perceive as white and less than a handful are from outside the United States. A majority of our contributors work at research intensive universities (64%) and only 21 percent are in non-tenure track positions (including graduate students). In light of these findings, we are recommitting ourselves in striving to be a collaborative and inclusive space that is a welcoming community to diverse readers and contributors.

While we plan to do this in a number of ways, one exciting outgrowth of this commitment is forming the First Publics Advisory Board composed of six stellar and accomplished public sociologists who are also dedicated teachers: Michel Estefan, Kyle Green, Shamus Khan, Johnnie Lotesta, Myron T. Strong, and Lisa Wade. The Board has agreed to meet with our leadership team several times a year to brainstorm with us and help move us closer to our goals. We are excited about the ways that this group represents a broader range of higher ed institutions and positionalities. We met for the first time last week and are already feeling renewed and reinvigorated with fresh ideas to keep First Publics relevant for teachers and students alike.As we ended the call, one of our board members said that it felt good to be in a space where we could speak from a place of hope in spite of all that is happening in this social and political moment. We couldn’t agree more – and we continue to invite you to join the conversation here at First Publics.