Plagiarism, Citations, and Paraphrasing

This chapter covers issues around citing, and crediting others for, their ideas and work. The chapter defines and provides examples of plagiarism and offers strategies for avoiding plagiarism in one’s own work. The chapter lays out situations when sources should be cited and the types of sources that are most appropriate to cite in specific situations. Four prominent citation styles are reviewed—American Psychological Association, American Sociological Association, Index Medicus, and Chicago styles. Ways to diversify citations and to avoid over-citing sources are also presented. Ways to paraphrase sources without quoting them directly are offered.

Gaining Confidence, Experience, and Knowledge as Researchers among Undergraduate Sociology Students

Advanced undergraduate students struggle with executing complete research projects that involve data collection and analysis. Research indicates that engaging in undergraduate research is a high-impact practice. The American Sociological Association recommends that sociology majors engage in research beyond their research methods and statistics courses. We used a pre-/post-assessment model across three semesters in all upper-level undergraduate sociology courses at our institution. The assessment measured confidence, knowledge, and experience with research methods. Fifty-eight students completed at least one pre-/post-assessment pair. Of those, 27 students completed two pre-/post-assessments. No students completed three pre-/post-assessments. We find that experience and confidence had statistically significant increases at each survey point. Knowledge increased but was statistically significant for only two groups: the full sample on the first post-assessment (N = 58) and the students with two assessment pairs on their second post-assessment (N = 27) who participated across two semesters.

Models of the Sociology Minor at Institutions of Higher Education in the United States

Although the structure and content of the sociology major has been addressed by a variety of scholars and several American Sociological Association (ASA) task forces over the past three decades, the structure, content, and even the purpose of the sociology minor has been ignored. In this article, we address this gap in the literature through two investigations. The first utilizes an examination of the websites and academic handbooks of 248 bachelor’s degree-granting institutions to discern the structure and contents of the sociology minor. We identify four models for the sociology minor found in U.S. higher education. The second study utilizes data gathered through the ASA 2019–2020 Department Survey. Included in the survey were a variety of questions regarding department chairs’ perceptions of the sociology minor. We conclude by suggesting that we should not only be concerned with what the sociology minor currently is but also consider what the minor could be.

Visualizing Demographic Representation in ASA Sections: The Case of Race/Ethnicity and Gender in CITAMS

The American Sociological Association (ASA) and its sections have taken on new efforts at increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in recent years. In 2020-21, the Communication, Information Technologies, and Media Sociology (CITAMS) section’s DEI Committee conducted a survey of section elected officials and award winners (n=42). This visualization reports the results of survey participants’ self-identified demographic group memberships across section offices and awards, and compares them to section- and ASA-wide baselines. By doing so, the visualization offers an example of how sections can assess the racial and gender representation of their section leadership and award recipients relative to demographics of the section and ASA as a whole.

Our friend Melvin Kohn

In the genre of oral history of sociology, the author narrates his experience of communication with the famous American sociologist, former president of the American Sociological Association (1987), honorary doctor of the Kiev-Mohyla Academy Melvin Lester Kohn (1928–2021). It is about the friendship and cooperation of Melvin Cohn with Ukrainian colleagues, his participation in the organization and holding of international research with the participation of Ukraine. The creative heritage of the American sociologist is important for the development of sociology in the world and in Ukraine, in particular for better understanding the social structure of Ukrainian society.

Constructing the Sociology of Disability: An Analysis of Syllabi

The sociology of disability has emerged relatively recently as a subfield in sociology and has seen growing institutionalization within the field, including the establishment of a section in the American Sociological Association. The field, however, is still emerging. There is not yet an American journal dedicated to it or more than a few textbooks. The small set of professors in this field, therefore, experience both the opportunity and the challenge of constructing the essence of the field when they teach. In this study, we draw on 25 syllabi from sociologists teaching the sociology of disability and a broader set of disability courses to examine four elements of the syllabi—course description, learning goals/objectives, course topics, and readings—to assess the presence and content of an emerging core for the discipline. For each element, we analyze the thematic range and level of agreement across syllabi. We find that professors resist relying solely on sociology, instead embracing interdisciplinary scholarship and prioritizing the voices of people with disabilities. Syllabi show little overlap in readings or authors. The highest level of agreement is found among the course descriptions and topics, especially with regard to the sociological perspective and the key concepts of sociology such as social institutions, culture, theory, and inequality.

Latino/a Sociology: Toward a New Paradigm

Despite the proliferation of significant scholarship on Latinos/as over the past four decades and the formal establishment of a Latina/o sociology section in the American Sociological Association in 1994, Latino/a sociology has yet to be systematically defined or fully developed. This essay isolates the underlying premises that mark this developing field. Latino/a sociology is grounded in the standpoints of Latinos/as and anchors its analyses in theories of race and racialization. Latino/a sociology also transcends disciplinary boundaries, incorporating developments in intersectionality, critical race theory, and postcolonial theories. Drawing from transnational perspectives—on migration, globalization, and the experiences of borders and borderlands—Latino/a sociology remains attuned to social processes across boundaries and is oriented to social justice and human rights. Here we propose a new paradigm for Latino/a sociology that moves beyond the Black-White binary to build more comprehensive understandings of race and racialization in the twenty-first century.

The Meaning of “Racism”

This article explores the meanings of racism in the sociology of race/ethnicity and provides a descriptive framework for comparing theories of racism. The authors argue that sociologists use racism to refer to four constructs: (1) individual attitudes, (2) cultural schema, and two constructs associated with structural racism: (3) preexisting consequential inequalities, that is, racial dominance, and (4) processes that create or maintain racial dominance. The article compares this framework with a content and citation analysis of 1,037 sociology journal articles published from 1995 to 2015, a period stretching from a major call to renew sociological attention to racism, to the founding of the American Sociological Association journal, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. The authors find six communities organized around distinctive citations and using different meanings of racism. They conclude by pushing toward the question of what racism ought to mean by discussing the implications for both sociological research and public sociology.

2019 Hans O. Mauksch Address Teaching: The Body in Question

I presented the 2019 Hans O. Mauksch address at the American Sociological Association annual meeting in New York City on August 13, 2019. In this address, I explore how sociology faculty perceive their physical bodies in relationship to teaching. After reviewing the literature, I surveyed a national sample of sociology faculty from diverse institutional contexts to find out how aware they were of their bodies in the classroom. I also asked questions related to how aging, chronic illness, and other health issues might affect the utilization of their bodies in teaching. Finally, a third area of research emphasized whether or not sociology faculty saw teaching as performative, and if yes, in what ways. This article is adapted from that address.