Student and Department Updates
Sociology Department News:
Our building name has changed to River Front Hall[/notice]
Abraham Calderon
On behalf of the Boise State Alumni Association and the entire
university, I am pleased to inform you that you have been chosen as
one of the 2014 Boise State University Top Ten Scholars. This honor is
bestowed annually upon ten of Boise State’s outstanding graduating
students. You were selected based on your academic success,
extracurricular involvement, and volunteer activities.
The Boise State Alumni Association is proud to recognize you at the
upcoming awards reception on Monday, April 28, in the Jordan Ballroom
in the Student Union Building.
My findings expose the paradoxical phenomena of mobilizing words and actual inaction. Immigrants are intimately aware of the exploitative circumstances facing them and they see collective action as the only way to address community issues. Due to their particular form of economic integration, working-class immigrants are divided against each other. An “everybody for themselves” mentality extends beyond the workplace and is reinforced through prevalent liberal individualistic social values. This process leads to detachment and isolationism from community, preventing awareness and motivation from thriving.
Learning about U.S. civic institutions and their rights within instills the necessary confidence for working-class Mexican immigrants to become politicized. This specific form of education can come in a variety of ways and works as a catalyst to overcoming detachment and isolationism. I argue that dynamic and not explicitly political strategies can be used to build community. Community and social cohesion is the means through which awareness and motivation can thrive into increasing collective action and the key to sustaining politicization. Associate Professor Arthur Scarritt presented at the PSA with former student turned U of Utah sociology graduate student Jared Fitzgerald. Michael Blain’s review of Speculative Security: The Politics of Pursuing Terrorist Monies, by Marieke de Goede, was published in the American Journal of Sociology. Vanessa Cornwall is going to pursue her master’s in Latin American Studies at the University of New Mexico. Lesley Yang will attend the University of Minnesota to pursue her PhD in Education. Boomer Grahn received a BSU Student Research Initiative fellowship.Michael Kreiter won a Pacific Sociological Association travel award. Jacob Church, Michael Kreiter, and Vanessa Cornwall all won BSU Student Research Initiative travel awards. • A new book by sociology professor Michael Blain titled “Power, Discourse, and Victimage Ritual in the War on Terror” has been published by Ashgate Publishers, 2012.
• Professor of Sociology Michael Blain’s article, “The Politics of Victimage: Power and Subjection in a US Anti-Gay Campaign,” was selected as a key article for inclusion in “Traditions of Discourse and Discourse Analysis,” a Virtual Special Issues edition of Critical Discourse Studies (2012).
• Michael Blain, Department of Sociology, presented a paper on “Empire and the Global War on Terrorism” to the World Congress of Sociology in Gothenberg, Sweden, (12 July 2011). Administrative Assistant for the Sociology Department Paty Klein was selected as the 2013 Association of Classified Employees (ACE) Employee of the Year!
Makala Knutson from Boise, is a first-generation student majoring in both sociology and psychology. As a member of the Intermountain Social Research Lab under the direction of Dr. Arthur Scarritt, Knutson conducted intensive sociological research on the experiences of students facing financial crisis. She presented this research at both the Pacific Sociological Association Conference in San Diego and at the Boise State University Research and Scholarship Conference. In 2011, she was honored with the Scheffer Sociology Endowed Scholarship and the J.T. Osborne Scholarship. She became the president of the Boise State Sociology Club a year later. That summer, under the guidance of Dr. Bonnie Kenaley of the Department of Social Work, Knutson worked with seven other students to create the first annual Healing Hearts Camp, a bereavement camp for Treasure Valley children between the ages of 6 and 11. Inspired by her experiences with these children, she independently traveled to Mbabane, Swaziland, where she did similar bereavement work at the Sandra Lee Centre, a home for 28 orphaned children. In addition to these grief workshops, she taught at the preschool, tutored elementaryage students after school and volunteered at the Mbabane Government Hospital. At home, she dedicates her time to working with at-risk youth as a youth specialist at the Hays Shelter Home. She is awaiting the final decision on a U.S. Fulbright Fellowship to return to Swaziland for ten months of research at the end of this year. Honored Faculty: Dr. Arthur Scarritt, assistant professor, Department of Sociolog
Nikki A.Weihe from Boise, is a McNair Scholar majoring in criminal justice and sociology. Her state-approved prison research explores possible explanations for prison violence. Weihe presented at several symposia including at the University of Washington and U.C. Berkeley, and in February 2013 presented findings at Ronald E. McNair’s alma mater, North Carolina A&T University. She has presented papers at conferences in the U.S. and Canada for Alpha Phi Sigma, the national criminal justice honor society. She was the research assistant for sociology professor Michael Blain, and has been a teaching assistant and guest lecturer for several undergraduate classes. In addition to tutoring Boise State students in the Student Success Program, she teaches ESL classes off campus for Service Learning. She also enjoyed an extensive internship at ACLU of Idaho. For nearly 11 years, she has volunteered weekly at a women’s prison facilitating a spiritual yoga program she created. In March 2013, she received the Abraham Lincoln Fellowship from the University of Illinois at Chicago, and is leaving Idaho to earn a Ph.D. in criminology, law and justice. Honored Faculty: Dr. Andrew Giacomazzi, professor, Department of Criminal Justice
Mario Venegas, a sociology major and McNair Scholar at BSU (graduating Spring 2013), has accepted admission into the PhD program in Sociology at the University of Texas at Austin beginning Fall 2013. Mario thanks the faculty at the Sociology department, his research mentor Dr. Arthur Scarritt, and everyone who helped him develop the academic and professional skills to reach this point in his journey.
Jacke’lle Knickrehm (Social Science, 2013) has been accepted into the MSW program at Northwest Nazarene University
Danielle Martens (Social Science B.S., 2012) has been admitted into the Master of Social Work Program at Northwest Nazarene University. Dr. Arthur Scarritt’s 2013 article, “First the Revolutionary Culture Innovations in Empowered Citizenship from Evangelical Highland Peru” was published 4/3/2013 in the SAGE journals Latin American PerspectivesAbstract
The long-standing marginalization of highland Peru, coupled with the terrible violence of the 1980s and 1990s civil war, make it a difficult place for political mobilization. Nevertheless, one village successfully asserted its self-determination in the face of an exploitative political economy through conversion to Evangelical Christianity. A revolutionary cultural break from the mainstream created a vibrant local subculture that stressed brotherhood and provided meaning to adherents, allowing them to seize local opportunities to assert a more egalitarian social reality. While specific to this village’s conditions, these experiences speak to broader possibilities for innovative social change through novel combinations of cultural practices and political concerns.
Click on the link below to read the full text. http://lap.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/04/02/0094582X13484293 posted 4/4/2013Dr. Ginna Husting’s 2006 article, “Neutralizing Protest,” has just been anthologized in a new reader: Readings on the Rhetoric of Social Protest, 3rd Edition. Charles E. Morris III, and Stephen Howard Browne, Editors.u.boisestate.edu
Link: http://www.stratapub.com/MorrisBrowne3/MorrisBrowne3.htm#description
posted 3/18/2013
Levin Welch, a 2011 graduate of the Sociology Department currently completing his Masters at the University of Nevada, Reno has had his article, “Neoliberalism, Economic Crisis, and the 2008 Financial Meltdown in the United States” published in the International Review of Modern Sociology.
posted 11/12/2012
* IMSRL wants you! Want to be part of an intensive undergraduate research training team? Contact Dr. Arthur Scarritt
Student Lesley Yang wins Summer Research Opportunity Program award to research at Penn State.
* Scheffer Scholarship winners announced!!
* IMSRL students in 2012 San Diego.