Our department does more than think about sociology; we “do” sociology as well. In this newsletter, we highlight two members of the department who are doing the work of public sociology. Ezra Temko, PhD, talks about his work in the Beyond the Bronze movement, and Connie Frey Spurlock, PhD, discusses her work on the Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Team.

In 1805, Thomas Kirkpatrick settled in what today is Edwardsville, Illinois. After territorial governor Ninian Edwards named the area where Kirkpatrick lived as the county seat for Madison County and appointed Kirkpatrick as a judge, Kirkpatrick named the town in Edwards' honor. In 2008, the City of Edwardsville erected a statue of Ninian Edwards on a pedestal in the downtown area to honor the city’s namesake. Ninian Edwards, however, does not deserve this public honor–Edwards owned enslaved people, vetoed legislation to repeal the territory’s indentured servitude law (a de facto system of slavery), and led campaigns of murder and removal of indigenous people.

Growing out of this past summer’s Black Lives Matter protests, a group formed to advocate for relocation of the statue to an educational setting where it will not honor and venerate Ninian Edwards’ racist legacy.

Read the full blog here.

In 2018, I was asked to be part of a team to develop a Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation Campus Center at SIUE. In January 2020, the Association of American Colleges and Universities named SIUE a Truth, Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT) Campus Center site. One of my responsibilities as a TRHT team member is the E-Stories Project, an infrastructure for sharing and documenting the experiences of community members through digital storytelling. By highlighting the lived experiences of East St. Louisans and SIUE students, staff and faculty who call East St. Louis home, our hope is to present a more positive image of the city and raise awareness about the effects of structural racism on the city. Sociology seniors are well-suited for this kind of project given their understanding of equity, diversity and social justice, so I contacted Sandra Weissinger, PhD, associate professor in the SIUE Department of Sociology, who was teaching the fall senior assignment course, to see if she would be interested in collaborating with the project. She was and embedded E-Stories into the class.

Read the full blog here.

Halfway through the spring 2020 semester, SIUE shifted the majority of its classes online. Zoom became the primary way we connected to colleagues, students, family and friends. Many jokes floated around social media about the geese celebrating having the campus to themselves. In these “unprecedented” times, we all had to adapt to a “new normal” while wearing masks and physically distancing.  As a sociologist, I questioned what was “new” and “unprecedented” about the world considering that the COVID-19 pandemic shined a spotlight on the various social inequalities and the power structures that created and perpetuated them. Because of the pandemic, we were asked to pay attention to—among other issues—the state of the U.S. healthcare system, systemic racism, workers’ rights and the lengths that local/state/federal government agencies can go to monitor our well-being. These very matters drove me to create Sociology 390:  Power, Inequality and Resistance in a Pandemic.

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I started working with the ADVANCE team at SIUE in fall 2020. As a National Science Foundation sponsored program, ADVANCE is focused on improving the recruitment, retention and advancement of women and racial minorities in STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) and SBS (social and behavioral sciences) fields.

Being on the ADVANCE team has provided me with firsthand experience on crafting recommendations which contribute to structural change. As an aspiring sociologist, I am committed to bringing awareness and understanding to how social institutions promote and perpetuate inequality. Working with the ADVANCE grant is a privilege as I am working alongside professionals and scholars who are also committed to equity and making SIUE a better place for both students and faculty.

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For my exit requirement, I am interning with the SIUE Successful Communities Collaborative (SSCC) in partnership with the Goshen Market Foundation. Many people in the Edwardsville area know the Goshen Market as the Saturday Farmers' Market held downtown, but the Foundation is much more than that. It also operates the Beet Box, a mobile farmers' market that delivers locally grown produce to low-income communities throughout the county. Board President Jessica DeSpain, PhD, and the rest of the Board of Tomatoes would like to expand the Foundation’s reach into St. Clair County.

Read more.

I annotated and interpreted 30 album covers from notable artists within the extreme and heavy metal subgenres to study the representations of gender and masculinity. 

The result of my study demonstrates a unique negotiation with masculinity as young men members of the scene work to define their masculinity within hegemonic forms while also changing and adapting their expressions to suit an era that has brought forward movements such as the #MeToo movement.

Read more.