Theme: “If They Come In The Morning”: Stories and the Sociology of Education
February 23 – 25, 2024
Asilomar, CA
Conference program: Conference program
Program Chair: Professor Antar Tichavakunda, University of California, Santa Barbara
Keynote Speakers:
- Professor Karida L. Brown, Professor of Sociology, Emory University
- Professor Daniel G. Solórzano, Professor of Social Science and Comparative Education and Chicana/o and Central American Studies, University of California Los Angeles
Conference Description
Stories are powerful. Stories shaped how the media and the U.S. government miscast the radical work of Angela Davis. The spread of false stories created a moral panic surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and Critical Race Theory (CRT). The attack on DEI and CRT, however, is a sociology of education problem.
James Baldwin wrote a letter of solidarity to Angela Davis during her legal fight: “For, if they take you in the morning, they will be coming for us that night.” If they come for CRT and DEI in the morning, will they come for the sociology of education at night?
We must take stories seriously.
Research, regardless of methodology or data type, is storytelling. Stories create the contours of what makes the sociology of education, the sociology of education. We use theory to develop stories about what we expect to see and also to challenge prevailing stories; we collect data of all sorts to assess the evidence for stories; and, we use qualitative and quantitative data to explore lived experiences and social phenomena in different ways. Some stories are so well-worn in education that we no longer notice them, creating a disciplinary unconscious, shaping what questions we think are worth asking. And stories from research can take on lives and careers of their own. The “acting White hypothesis” and “more Black men in jail than in college” narrative both began as research. Both have been debunked, yet still have currency. Stories are powerful and shape policy.
The charge of this conference theme is to take stories seriously – to make explicit the stories we are telling through our data, to explore the stories in use, and to explore in our 50th year as an association, stories about the sociology of education. Proposals might grapple with the following sample questions:
1) How can we do a better job of telling stories with data? What methods do/should we use? How do we present data to tell a story?
2) How do institutional leaders, parents, and/or members of the education policy community tell stories that reproduce inequities and/or imagine possible futures?
3) How can members of the sociology of education community challenge mis/disinformation rampant in the media, in schools, and in the academy?
4) What are the “same old stories” of the sociology of education (i.e., the doxa, the “stock stories”)? Of these stories, what do we need to discard or challenge?
5) What stories do we still need to tell? Why?
The Sociology of Education Association (SEA) invites proposals for its 2024 meeting that explore these issues in educational contexts and processes broadly defined. We invite both theoretical and empirical contributions, and we encourage submissions that draw upon a wide array of data sources, levels of analysis, and methodologies. Direct questions to SEA Program Chair, Antar A. Tichavakunda,, seaconf2024@gmail.com
Full Call for Proposals (as PDF)
Awards
We are pleased to offer two awards for excellent work in our community as well as travel awards for Black graduate students. The deadline for these awards was December 1st, 2023.
Image of the beach by Asilomar conference grounds, the location of the annual meeting of the Sociology of Education Association, taken by Sharon and Rick on Flickr.
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