Program News
Read stories and articles for and about current and prospective students and faculty in the Sociology program.
Publications
The Sociology program publishes a monthly newsletter during fall and spring semesters. Explore past issues below.
You can also browse recent books published by Sociology faculty and scholars.
Recents News
May 9, 2022
Propaganda, protest, and repression in Russia: an insiders look with Anna Zhelnina
Anna Zhelnina, post-doctoral researcher at the Helsinki Institute of Urban and Regional Research, discusses the state of the Russian opposition to the war in Ukraine on the International Horizons podcast
- Podcast
- Alumni News
May 9, 2022
The Ukraine War Dashes a Grad’s Commencement Plans
Anna Zhelnina, a Russian citizen working in Finland, was looking forward to getting hooded in person.
- Alumni News
- GC Stories
May 3, 2022
Don't Pin the Woes of American Workers on Immigration
In her new book, Professor Ruth Milkman argues that weakened unions and other labor market shifts, not immigrants, have hurt American workers.
- GC Stories
- Research News
May 1, 2022
Scholars to Know This AAPI Heritage Month
Meet Graduate Center faculty, students, and alumni who study and celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander heritage.
- Alumni News
- Faculty News
- Student News
- GC Stories
Highlights
Sociology Program Newsletter
The Graduate Center's Sociological Imagination
Sociological Imagination is the Sociology program's monthly newsletter, primarily published during the fall and spring semesters.
- Vol. 3, Issue 4: April 2021
- Vol. 3, Issue 3: February 2021
- Vol. 3, Issue 2: November 2020
- Vol. 3, Issue 1: October 2020
- Special Edition: July 2020
- Vol. 2, Issue 6: April 2020
- Vol. 2, Issue 5: February 2020
- Vol. 2, Issue 4: December 2019
- Vol. 2, Issue 3: November 2019
- Vol. 2, Issue 2: October 2019
- Vol. 2, Issue 1: September 2019
- Vol. 1, Issue 5: April 2019
- Vol. 1, Issue 4: March 2019
- Vol. 1, Issue 3: February 2019
- Vol. 1, Issue 2: December 2018
- Vol. 1, Issue 1: November 2018
Recent Books
View all Sociology books
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

Gains and Losses
How Protestors Win and Lose
Co-authored by Luke Elliott-Negri (Ph.D. candidate, Sociology), Isaac Jabola-Carolus (Ph.D. candidate, Sociology), Marc Kagan (Ph.D. candidate, History), Jessica Mahlbacher (Ph.D. '21, Political Science), Manès Weisskircher , and Anna Zhelnina (Ph.D. '20, Sociology)
Presents cutting edge theory about the consequences of social movements and protest while asking what kind of trade-offs protest movements face in trying to change the world around them.
Many scholars have tried to figure out why some social movements have an impact and others do not. By looking inside movements at their component parts and recurrent strategic interactions, the authors of Gains and Losses show that movements usually produce a variety of effects, including recurring packages of gains and losses. They ask what kinds of trade-offs and dilemmas these packages reflect by looking at six empirical cases from around the world: Seattle's conflict over the $15 an hour minimum wage; the establishment of participatory budgeting in New York City; a democratic insurgency inside New York City's Transport Workers' Union; a communist party's struggle to gain votes and also protect citizen housing in Graz, Austria; the internal movement tensions that led to Hong Kong's umbrella occupation; and Russia's electoral reform movement embodied in Alexei Navalny. They not only examine the diverse players in these cases involved in politics and protest, but also the many strategic arenas in which they maneuver. While each of these movements made some remarkable gains, this book shows how many also suffered losses, especially in the longer run.
Published March 2022
Oxford University Press

One quarter of the Nation: Immigration and the Transformation of America
Princeton University Press, 2022
The impact of immigrants over the past half century has become so much a part of everyday life in the United States that we sometimes fail to see it. This deeply researched book by one of America’s leading immigration scholars tells the story of how immigrants are fundamentally changing this country.
An astonishing number of immigrants and their children—nearly 86 million people—now live in the United States. Together, they have transformed the American experience in profound and far-reaching ways that go to the heart of the country’s identity and institutions.
Unprecedented in scope, One Quarter of the Nation traces how immigration has reconfigured America’s racial order—and, importantly, how Americans perceive race—and played a pivotal role in reshaping electoral politics and party alignments. It discusses how immigrants have rejuvenated our urban centers as well as some far-flung rural communities, and examines how they have strengthened the economy, fueling the growth of old industries and spurring the formation of new ones. This wide-ranging book demonstrates how immigration has touched virtually every facet of American culture, from the music we dance to and the food we eat to the films we watch and books we read.
One Quarter of the Nation opens a new chapter in our understanding of immigration. While many books look at how America changed immigrants, this one examines how they changed America. It reminds us that immigration has long been a part of American society, and shows how immigrants and their families continue to redefine who we are as a nation.
Foner is a distinguished professor of Sociology at Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center.
Published February 2022
Princeton University Press 2022