Program News
PROGRAM NEWS
Read stories and updates for and about current and prospective students and faculty in the Sociology program below.
Publications
The Sociology program publishes a monthly newsletter during the fall and spring semesters. Explore past issues below.
You can also browse recent books published by Sociology faculty and scholars.
Announcements and Updates
More Like This
Presidential Professor Phil Kasinitz Received 2022 ASA Distinguish Scholar Award
Our Professor Phil Kasinitz just won the 2022 Distinguished Career Award in the ASA International Migration session.
Big congratulations!
- Congratulations/Kudos
- Announcement

Distinguished Professor Emeritus Richard D. Alba is ranked #110 among Top Scientists for 2022
We are happy to share that our Distinguished Professor Emeritus Richard Alba, has ranked #110 in the world and #69 nationally among top scientists in the area of Law and Political Science.
The full world ranking published by Research.com.
Congratulations to Professor Richard Alba on this important accomplishment!
- Announcement
- Congratulations/Kudos

Alumna Andréa Becker Published An Op-Ed in New York Times
Men benefit from abortion—why don't cis men talk about their abortion stories and why do we mostly study women?
Read the op-ed "Men Have a Lot to Lose When Roe Falls" in New York Times written by our alumna Andréa Becker, who just began her postdoc journey at University of California San Francisco.
- Congratulations/Kudos
Recent News
May 19, 2023
Graduate Center Students Win Prestigious Dissertation Fellowships
Ph.D. candidates secure highly competitive grants for their dissertation projects.
- GC Stories
- Student News
May 1, 2023
Celebrating Graduate Center Scholars During AAPI Heritage Month
The Graduate Center recognizes the work of our alumni and faculty during Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month.
- GC Stories
- Faculty News
- Alumni News
Apr 12, 2023
John Torpey to receive Award for Excellence in International Exchange
The award is given by the DAAD Alumni Association-USA for his work organizing academic exchanges with Germany.
- Faculty News
Apr 3, 2023
Black, Race and Ethnic Studies Fellowships Awarded to 65 CUNY Faculty and Doctoral Students
The fellowship is designed to enhance Black, race and ethnic studies scholarship and teaching at CUNY and is part of a $3 million, Mellon Foundation-funded initiative.
- GC Stories
- Faculty News
- Student News
Program Newsletter
Sociological Imagination
Sociological Imagination is the Sociology program's monthly newsletter, primarily published during the fall and spring semesters.
Recent Books
View all Sociology books
Purgatory Citizenship
Reentry, Race, and Abolition
By GC Alumnus, Calvin John Smiley (Ph.D. in Sociology, 2014)
Reentry after release from incarceration is often presented as a story of redemption. Unfortunately, this is not the reality. Those being released must navigate the reentry process with diminished legal rights and amplified social stigmas, in a journey that is often confusing, complex, and precarious. Making use of life-history interviews, focus groups, and ethnographic fieldwork with low-income urban residents of color, primarily Black men, Calvin John Smiley finds that reentry requires the recently released to negotiate a web of disjointed and often contradictory systems that serve as an extension of the carceral system. No longer behind bars but not fully free, the recently released navigate a state of limbo that deprives them of opportunity and support while leaving them locked in a cycle of perpetual punishment. Warning of the dangers of reformist efforts that only serve to further entrench carceral systems, Purgatory Citizenship advocates for abolitionist solutions rooted in the visions of the people most affected.
Published May 2023
University of California Press

The Battle Nearer to Home
The Persistence of School Segregation in New York City
Despite its image as an epicenter of progressive social policy, New York City continues to have one of the nation's most segregated school systems. Tracing the quest for integration in education from the mid-1950s to the present, The Battle Nearer to Home follows the tireless efforts by educational activists to dismantle the deep racial and socioeconomic inequalities that segregation reinforces. The fight for integration has shifted significantly over time, not least in terms of the way "integration" is conceived, from transfers of students and redrawing school attendance zones, to more recent demands of community control of segregated schools. In all cases, the Board eventually pulled the plug in the face of resistance from more powerful stakeholders, and, starting in the 1970s, integration receded as a possible solution to educational inequality. In excavating the history of New York City school integration politics, in the halls of power and on the ground, Christopher Bonastia unearths the enduring white resistance to integration and the severe costs paid by Black and Latino students. This last decade has seen activists renew the fight for integration, but the war is still far from won.
Published July 2022
Stanford University Press

Liberty Road
Black Middle-Class Suburbs and the Battle Between Civil Rights and Neoliberalism
A unique insight into desegregation in the suburbs and how racial inequality persists
Half of Black Americans who live in the one hundred largest metropolitan areas are now living in suburbs, not cities. In Liberty Road, Gregory Smithsimon shows us how this happened, and why it matters, unearthing the hidden role that suburbs played in establishing the Black middle-class.
Focusing on Liberty Road, a Black middle-class suburb of Baltimore, Smithsimon tells the remarkable story of how residents broke the color barrier, against all odds, in the face of racial discrimination, tensions with suburban whites and urban Blacks, and economic crises like the mortgage meltdown of 2008. Drawing on interviews, census data, and archival research he shows us the unique strategies that suburban Black residents in Liberty Road employed, creating a blueprint for other Black middle-class suburbs.
Smithsimon re-orients our perspective on race relations in American life to consider the lived experiences and lessons of those who broke the color barrier in unexpected places. Liberty Road shows us that if we want to understand Black America in the twenty-first century, we must look not just to our cities, but to our suburbs as well.
Published April 2022
NYU Press