Penn Sociology News

Benjamin Pollack, a rising College senior, wrote an abstract for an article on negotiating healthcare published in Publius Journal of Federalism earlier this month. The published abstract is below.

Negotiations between federal and state officials are a mainstay of intergovernmental relations, but the politics of negotiation have been largely understudied. In this article, we provide a window on those politics by examining the development of the Arkansas premium assistance waiver—an early and influential Medicaid waiver. We examine the leverage of both the federal and state governments in their efforts to reach agreement on a plan that suited both sets of actors. The federal government was providing funding important to the state, but the state had the capacity necessary to put a program in place. The federal government wanted some type of expansion in a Southern state; Arkansas wanted to do it “their way.” Also key to the Arkansas case is the persistence and shared vision of the federal and state actors who in the end trusted each other and produced a policy both were proud of.

The Penn Fels Policy Research Initiative has selected new working groups and conferences for funding, and will continue to fund four ongoing projects. Of the grantees are two Penn Sociology faculty: Daniel Aldana Cohen and Dorothy Roberts.

Daniel Aldana Cohen will convene the Socio-Spatial Carbon Collaborative, which will investigate the intersection of social and ecological inequalities in the built environment, with an eye to broad public engagement and public policy.

Dorothy Roberts and the Penn Program on Race Science and Society (PRSS) will host a two-day international symposium in April 2018 that interrogates the global variability of race in science across time and space.

 The Sociology department recently celebrated the retirement of Prof. Janice Madden. The day started with an introduction from Janet Kohlase (Professor of Economics at the University of Houston), and was followed by three talks based on the "Challenges of Cities" from Kohlase, Rebecca Tesfai (Assistant Professor of Sociology, Temple University) and Andrew Haughwout (Senior Vice President, Federal Reserve Bank of New York). Afterwards, the Department celebrated the occasion with a reception.

 Photo credits: Marcus T. Wright

Charles Bosk will visit The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) this upcoming week (May 15-19, 2017) as a Visiting Osler Scholar. While visiting he will give a talk on his text, Forgive and Remember, as well as speak at UTMB's Institute for the Medical Humanities Annual Research Colloquium. More information on the institution can be found here. 

Onoso Imoagene was interviewed by Omnia last month about her new book, Beyond Expectations: Second-Generation Nigerians in the United States and Great Britain. You can read the full article here.

Betsie Garner and David Grazian have won the 2017 Award for Distinguished Scholarship for Best Article from the American Sociological Association Animals and Society Section, for their coauthored article, "Naturalizing Gender through Childhood Socialization Messages in a Zoo." The article was published last year in Social Psychology Quarterly.

Angela Simms, Ph.D. student, has been awarded a Dissertation Research Fellowship for the 2017-2018 academic year.

Janice Madden has been awarded the TCPW-Provost Award for Promoting Gender Equity. The award is a means of recognizing the achievements of faculty members who have significantly advanced gender equity throughout their careers.

Marcus T. Wright, Penn Sociology's undergraduate program and communications manager, spoke with Penn Current about his latest book, “Paradox of the Learning Game: The Promise and Plight of Video Games and Learning.” You can read the full article here.