A New Vision and a Hiatus:

Sociological Images turned 8 this year. It’s been a long, busy, and exciting journey and my own writing has been front-and-center for much of that time. Moving forward, my hope is to step back into more of an editor role, helping established scholars bring attention to their research, giving newer scholars a platform, and helping other sociology bloggers reach a wider audience. Essentially, I would like to use this site as an amplifier, broadcasting as many sociologists as I can as widely as possible by either cross-posting or using the SocImages social media reach. So, to all the sociologists out there, look out for more requests to re-print, please don’t hesitate to pitch me ideas, and feel free to send me things to share!

But… not yet. SocImages is taking its first hiatus. My book deadline is March 1st, so I’m taking two months off to polish the draft. See you all in 30 days!

Visits:

We rounded out the year with over 2,900,000 visits and nearly 4,000,000 page views.  We are proud and honored to enjoy almost 80,000 Facebook friends, over 23,000 Twitter followers, plus nearly 15,000 on Pinterest and over 24,000 on Tumblr.  A huge thank you to everyone for your enthusiasm and support!

Highlights:

• Sociological Images was granted the American Sociological Association’s Distinguished Contributions to Teaching Award!
• With Doug Hartmann and Chris Uggen, I edited what might be sociology’s first anthology of blog posts, featuring bloggers from all over the sociology blog-o-sphere. It’s called Assigned: Life with Gender. Coming soon to this series!
• I had the incredible pleasure of debuting a talk about SocImages as a plenary at the Midwest Sociological Society meetings! (Now there’s one for undergrads, too!)
• SocImages was quoted in Peggy Orenstein’s Girls & Sex, Kate Harding’s Asking For It, and the Boston Women’s Health Book Collective’s Our Bodies, Ourselves!
• Jon Smadja made us mobile friendly!
• We were on NPR; covered or quoted in Autostraddle, the Smithsonian, The New Yorker, and New York Magazine; and I had an editorial in the Washington Post!
• Rush Limbaugh called me a “professorette”!

Best of 2015!

Over the last week we’ve featured my favorite and your most loved posts from 2015.  Here’s the list in case you missed it:

Reader’s Choice

• Where do negative stereotypes about feminists come from (5,200+ likes)
• Who farts? And who cares? (4,600+ likes)
• Five reasons why gendered products are a problem (3,800+ likes)
• Why don’t men kick each other in the balls? (3,300+ likes)
• Mass shootings in the U.S. are on the rise (2,400+ likes)
• Lumbersexuals and white heteromasculine pageantry (1,780+ likes)
• The corrupt economics behind Greece’s troubles (1,700+ likes)
• Who really runs the AirBnBs? (1,700+ likes)
• Are economics majors anti-social? (1,600+ likes)
• https://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2015/11/03/man-buns-as-cultural-appropriation/ (1,400+ likes)
• Media spin on violence against police (1,400+ likes)
• Why lesbians and gay men don’t share space (1,300+ likes)
• What is a world in which commercials make you cry? (1,100+ likes)
• Why it was easy for Rachel Dolezal to pass as black (1,000+ likes)
• Why do people hate the word “moist”? (1,000+ likes)

Editor’s Picks

• What is creepiness?
• The unbearable daintiness of women who eat with men
• The iron cage in binary code: How Facebook shapes your life chances
• Don Draper and the pursuit of loneliness
• The trouble with American views of female genital cutting
• Powerful people are sensitive to injustice, but mostly when they are its victims
• A short history of trophy hunting in America
• Is Justin Beiber’s “What do you mean?” just as bad as Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”?
• Slave families’ desperate efforts to reunite during Reconstruction

Happy New Year everyone!  Here’s to wonderful things in 2016!