Penn Sociology News

Annette Lareau, Penn GSE graduate Heather Curl, and Penn Sociology graduate Tina Wu publish “Cultural Conflict: The Implications of the Changing Dispositions of the Upwardly Mobile” in Sociological Forum.

Four Penn Sociology graduate students were selected as a finalist in the Social Sciences division for the 2019 Grad Ben Talks. The following students will be presenting next Friday, February 22, 2019 at Amado Recital Hall, Irvine Auditorium (3401 Spruce Street) from 1:30PM - 2:15PM:

Yun Cha, talk title: Who Do Graduate Degree Holders Marry? How the Separation of Advanced Degrees Affects Our Understanding of Trends in Educational Homogamy

João Victor Nery Fiocchi Rodrigues, talk title: Slavery, State Formation, and Citizenship: A Comparative Historical Analysis of the United States and Brazil

Angela Simms, talk title: The Continuing Significance of Race: Suburban Black Middle Class Disadvantage in Metropolitan-Area Political Economies

Haley Pilgrim, who won the Audience Choice and Social Science Award at the 2017 Grad Ben Talks, will be a judge for this year's Humanities Panel. 

Daniel Aldana Cohen co-authored an opinion piece for The Guardian entitled, A Green New Deal can give us the freedoms to allow humanity to flourish. This work was also recently highlight in Penn news.

Steve Viscelli’s research has been used in class action lawsuits against trucking companies that steal wages from truckers by misclassifying them as independent contractors. These cases have returned tens of millions of dollars to drivers over the last several years. Trucking companies have recently tried to stop these cases by forcing drivers into individual arbitrations. Last month, in an 8-0 opinion delivered by Justice Gorsuch (with a concurring opinion by Justice Ginsburg), the court said truckers cannot be forced into individual arbitrations – truckers (and other transportation workers) that cross state lines  have the right to sue together in court. Viscelli filed an amicus brief with drivers for the case. The New York Times’ covered the importance of the case and Viscelli's research in an editorial this summer. This clears the way for potentially several billion more in lost wages to be recovered for hundreds of thousands of long-haul truck drivers.

Penn Today has also covered this story and highlighted Viscelli's hard work.

Irma T. Elo has been appointed to the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Rising Midlife Mortality Rates and Socioeconomic Disparities.

Melissa J. Wilde, along with Penn Political Scientist Michele Margolis, has been awarded a project grant on better ways to identify Evangelical Christians on the General Social Survey through the Louisville Institute.

Amanda Barrett Cox, Ph.D. candidate, has been recently published in Du Bois Review with her paper titled "Engineered Struggle and 'Earned' Success: Preparing Black and Latino Students to Attend Elite Boarding Schools."

Steve Viscelli was recently on PBS Newshour Tonight. The episode featured Viscelli's new report. You can watch the video here.

Phoebe Ho, Hyunjoon Park, and Grace Kao have published an article on racial and ethnic differences in student participation in private supplementary education activities in Research in Social Stratification and Mobility. The article can be read here.