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A Modern Day Civil Rights Movement: Autumn Tyler and Helen Potts, Ph.D.

Find out more about the students who completed their Sociology degree in Spring & Summer 2016. We are very proud of their hard work and dedication!

Check out the conferences, such as SSSA, ESS, and others that our students and faculty attended this Spring and Summer.

Learn about how our faculty is representing the Department on campus, in the local news, and abroad via study abroad options for next Summer!

Learn about what both our undergraduate and graduate students are doing in the Department and on campus.

Join us as we remember Dr. Lesile Stanley-Stevens and send our condolences to her family.

Learn how you can make a direct impact on the UNT Sociology Department through your contribution. This newsletter is published two times annually, during the fall and spring/summer semesters.

University of North Texas 1155 Union Circle #311157 Denton, TX 76203

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University of North Texas 1155 Union Circle #311157 Denton, TX 76203

What began as a simple march to honor the lives of Alton Sterling and Philan-do Castile, later turned into an event that rocked the nation. As hundreds of people gathered into Belo Garden, a peaceful speak-out and protest ensued; however, near the closing of the march, gunshots rang out into downtown Dal-las. We soon feared for our lives as most of us protesters thought that the po-lice were driving their cars into the crowd or that there was a shooter specifi-cally targeting black protestors. Due to systemic racism and the repeated vio-lent attacks, black people are constantly fighting for the right to live. Given the current state of this country, to be black and alive is an act of resistance. "History repeats itself” but because of the complex and nuance ways of histori-cal reoccurrences, not all consider the underlying factors that lead to such rep-etitions. Systematic racism has always been an issue for black people in Ameri-ca, it exists through institutional racism such as in the criminal justice system, and also through norms and socialization practices we have yet to improve upon. However, it started to become a part of the national conversation once people had visuals of the killings. Due to the media and the imagery, we can no longer deny the existence of this systemic racism. The images we see now are similar to the images we remember from the Civil Rights of the 1960s con-taining the imagery of ferocious dogs being unleashed as weapons against peaceful protestors. These murders are modern day lynchings; and due to their publicity and normalization they have become a contemporary means for people to mass consume the grief and pain of black citizens, while also allow-ing them a position to remain distant from these atrocities through the act of distancing and othering.

Photo: Above Autumn Tyler, Dallas, TX, July 7, 2016 7:28PM

On July 7, 2016, two of our Sociology undergraduate students (Autumn Tyler and David

Montalvo) headed to Dallas with the intent to participate in another peaceful ‘Black Lives Matter’ protest. That night, five police officers’ lives were ended and countless

other lives were shaken. Autumn has graciously agreed to share her perspective and why she continues to participate. Sociological concepts such as systemic racism, race,

community engagement, the concept of sacred space, and the role of the media are

present in her vocalization of the experience that night.

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University of North Texas 1155 Union Circle #311157 Denton, TX 76203

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The more people view these killings, the more desensitized they become to-wards violence against black people. Therefore, the current Black Lives Matter movement is the modern day Civil Rights movement. My generation is using previous techniques to enact change and to continue the dialogue. Additionally, social media is used as a platform for black people to voice their concerns about the frequent injustices that arise. Despite getting criticism as a way to distract society from what is occurring throughout the world, social me-dia is being cultivated as a way for news and social change to spread. The use of hashtags, posts, and retweets disseminates news and information at an un-thinkable rate. This attention is then used to further acknowledge the pain and struggle that the black community faces. Inadvertently, social media acts as an outlet to democratize and articulate the perspectives of those whose voices would otherwise be unheard. These protests and rallies act as public memorial services. The protests create a fluid sacred space, altering the paved killing grounds to a place where the public can engage in collective healing, while also allowing us to take up space in order to publicly grieve as a clear statement that our society cannot ignore this shared pain. What occurred was a tragedy; however, that night we were reminded that as a community, we remain in a constant state of fear. As stat-ed earlier, our community's existence is an act of defiance; we are here to show that we can and will thrive no matter the circumstance.

Photo: Above Autumn Tyler, Dallas, TX, July 7, 2016 7:14 PM

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University of North Texas 1155 Union Circle #311157 Denton, TX 76203

By the end of Summer 2016, at least 41 students will have completed their de-gree in Sociology, including 3 PhD, 3 Master’s and 35 Bachelors. Doctoral and Master’s Graduates include: Nichola Driver, Ph.D. Maria Eirini Papadouka, Ph.D. Ann Catherine Reed Wilder, Ph.D. Alexandra Vanessa Bush, M.S. Joel Robert Jackson, M.S. Aaron Joseph Majek, M.S. Bachelor of Arts and Science graduates include: Doreen A. Appiah Chanel M. Atkinson Dominique E. Blout Jeremy Buchanan Clifton L. Caldwell Raynequa Campbell Ke’Yonna Hall Bill H.N. Huynh Ethan J. Kennedy Jennifer L. McFarland Nneka A. Onubogu Donald A. Ruthart Sunny L. Shepheard Stephanie J. Swenson Chelsi C. Walker Sanober Ali Janeen M. Ballesteros Ileana Cervantes David Harris Kara L. Keith Emily Morehou Blake A. Chambers Sheldon B. Finnell Tyroniece A. King Tracey L. Koehler Jason R. Limitone Jennifer R. Mill Ericka N. Moore Brandon S. Moreland Donald T. Smith-Miles Lamonica L. Williams Samantha L. Belson Jaclyn M. Drak e Sophie M. Gonsoulin Danny Hoang Le

Department of Sociology

1155 Union Circle

#311157 Denton, TX 76203

PHONE: (940) 565-2296

FAX:

(940) 369-7035

E-MAIL:

Dan Rodeheaver, Chair Rodeheaver@unt.edu

Fonda Gaynier, Administra-

tive Coordinator

Fonda.Gaynier@unt.edu

WEBSITE:

http://www.unt.edu/soci/

NEWSLETTER EDITOR:

Jennifer Knudsen

Jennifer.Knudsen@unt.edu

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University of North Texas 1155 Union Circle #311157 Denton, TX 76203

The 96th Annual meeting for the Southwestern Social Science Association (SSSA) was held in Las Vegas this year. The theme of the meeting was “Social Science and Public Conversations.” Both Faculty and Students represented UNT at the meeting. Below are the names of those who pre-sented at the conference: Allison Bradley Giselle Greenidge Nikolista Grigoropoulou Jeremy Buchanan Cassie Hudson Jacquelyn Cheun Mehmet Celebi Lauren Dent Suheyl Gurbuz Cynthia Cready Nichola Driver Emre Ozer Michael Thompson

Both Faculty and Students represented the UNT at the Eastern Sociologi-cal Society Meeting. The meeting took place in March 2016. Presenters included: Emirhan Demirham Deborah Fessenden Michael Thompson Gabe Ignatow Shelby Williams. (photo credit top: Jacquelyn Cheun) (photo credit right: Dr. Thompson– names: Emirhan, Debo-rah, Dr. Thompson, Dr. Ignatow, Shelby)

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This April students from the Department of Sociology presented at UNT’s Schol-ar’s Day in April. Scholar’s Day is an opportunity for undergraduate students to be able to present their research. Student’s from the sociology department in-cluded Sanober Ali, Samantha Belson, Ke’Yonna Hall, Jazmine McGill, Jennifer Miller. (Picture above: left to right Ke’Yonna Hall, Jazmine McGill, Jennifer Miller, Michael Thompson: Photo credit Ke”Yonna Hall).

In May Christy Cooksey presented at the NSF– funded Research Coordination Network (RCN) in Science, Engineering, and Education for Sustainability (SEES) Workshop theme III: Social/ Policy Impacts in Tallahassee, FL.

Dr. Seward with J.A. Seward represented UNT at the Texas Council on Family Relations’ Annual Conference, in Plano Texas, in April 2016. The title of their presentation was “Employment Leave for Fathers to Promote Healthier Families: A Global View.”

Jacquelyn Cheun represented UNT at the Texas Public Health meeting in Gal-veston, TX. Her poster was entitled “How does electronic health-literacy affect patient– doctor communication?” Representing research completed by herself and Dr. Gul Seckin.

Dr. Rodeheaver with J.L Williams and E.J. Lynton presented research in “Intimate Partner Homicide in Texas Counties: A Social Disorganization Approach” at the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences in Denver, CO on March 30th. 2016.

Lauren Dent presented at the Federation of North Texas Area Universities Grad-uate Student Research Symposium at Texas Women’s University on April 8th. Her presentation was titled “Corruption and Disaster Impact in Sub-Saharan Afri-ca’s Transportation Sector.”

University of North Texas 1155 Union Circle #311157 Denton, TX 76203

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Engbers, Trent A., Michael F. Thompson, & Timothy F. Slaper. (2016). “Theory and Measurement in Social Capital Research.” Social Indicators Research. DOI: 10.1007/s11205-016-1299-0.

Fitzmaurice, C., Ami R. Moore, et al. (2015). The global burden of cancer

2013. JAMA oncology, doi:10.1001/jamaoncol.2015.0735

Forouzanfar, M., Ami R. Moore, et al. (2015). Global, regional and national comparative risk assessment of 79 behavior al, environmental and occu- pational and metabolic risks or clusters of risks in 188 countries 1990- 2013: a systematic analysis for the GBD 2013. The Lancet, 386 (10010):2287-2323.

Ignatow, Gabe. & Rada Mihalcea, (2016). Text Mining: A guidebook for the

social sciences. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications

Jesmin, Syeda S. & Cynthia M. Cready. 2016. “Community Influences on

Married Women’s Safer Sex Negotiation Attitudes in Bangladesh: A Multi

level Analysis.” Archives of Sexual Behavior 45(2):383-393, doi: 10.1007/ s10508 -015-0572-7. Published online July 11, 2015.

Murray, C., Ami R. Moore, et al. (2015). Global, regional, and national disabil-

ity-adjusted life years (DALYs) for 306 diseases and injuries and healthy

life expectancy (HALE) for 188 countries, 1990-2013: quantifying the epi-

demiological transition. The Lancet, 386 (10009): 2145-2191.

Naghavi, M., Ami R. Moore, et al. (2015). Global, regional, and national age-

specific all cause and cause-specific mortality for 240 causes of death,

1990-203: A systematic analysis for Global Burden of Disease Study

2013. The Lancet, 385:117-171.

Ozgur Solakoglu, Nichola Driver, & Scott Belshaw. (2016). “The Effects of

Sexual Abuse on Deviant Behaviors Among Turkish Adolescents: The Me-

diating Role of Emotions.” International Journal of Offender Therapy and

Comparative Criminology: Sage Publications.

To read more about our faculty

and students, please visit our

IMPROVED website:

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University of North Texas 1155 Union Circle #311157 Denton, TX 76203

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University of North Texas 1155 Union Circle #311157 Denton, TX 76203

Rodeheaver, Daniel G. & Milan Zafirovski. (2016). “Sociology of Work.”

In: A. Scerri, K. Wray and B. Turner (eds.). The Encyclopedia of Social

Theory. London: Wiley.

Rush, Michael & Rudy Ray Seward. (Spring 2016). Parental leave in the USA:

International outlier riding a new wave among crosscurrents. National Council on Family Relations’ Report: Cultural Sea Change and Families,

FF67, pp. F15-F18.

Seçkin, Gul, D. Yeatts, S. Hughes, C. Hudson, & V. Bell. Being an Informed

Consumer of Health Information and Assessment of Electronic Health

Literacy in a National Sample of Internet Users: Validity and Reliability of

the e-HLS Instrument. J Med Internet Res 2016;18(7):e161

Seward, R. R. & M. Rush. (2016). Changing Fatherhood and Fathering across

Cultures towards Convergence in Work-Family Balance: Divergent Pro-

gress or Stalemate?;In I. Crespi & E. Ruspini (Eds.), Balancing Work and Family in a Changing Society: The Fathers' Perspective (pp. 13-31), Se-

ries: Global Masculinities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Seward, R.R. (2016). [Review of the book Learning on the Job: Parenting in Modern Ireland.. O’Doherty and Jackson A (Eds.). (2015).] Irish Journal

of Sociology, 24(2). TBD. Published online February 17th, 2016.

Vos, T., Ami Moore, et al. (2015). Global, regional, and national incidence,

prevalence, and YLDs for 301 acute and chronic diseases and injuries for

188 countries, 1990-2013: A systematic analysis for the Global Burden of

Disease study 2013. The Lancet

Zafirovski, Milan. & Daniel G. Rodeheaver, (2016). Conservatism’s Long Se-

cret Journey: From Medievalism to Fascism and Back. Saarbrucken, Ger-

many: Lap-Lambert Academic Publishing.

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The Sociology Department has been named Department of the year for 2015! Many students from the Sociology Department have contributed to the Eagle Feather, especially from Sociology Capstone course. The Eagle Feather is a selective publication of student capstone projects. Since 2007, 18 students from the Sociolo-gy Department have been represent-ed in the Eagle Feather, 7 of which have been in the last two years, with 4 in 2014 and 3 in 2015.

Next Summer students taking Introduction to Sociology (SOCI 1510) with Dr. Helen Potts from the Sociology Department and American Govern-ment I or II (PSCI: 1040 or 1050) with Dr. Wendy Watson from the Politi-cal Science Department will have the chance to study abroad in Shanghai. The students will also be taking a course taught by a professor at East China Normal University (ECNU) in Shanghai.

On Father’s Day, June 19th, Rudy Seward, an Emeritus of the Depart-ment of Sociology and Michael Rush had a guest editorial published in the Denton Record Chronical in regard to their research on Fathers, employ-ment, and involvement with the presence of a newborn in the family.

University of North Texas 1155 Union Circle #311157 Denton, TX 76203

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Allison Bradley (middle) was awarded the Leonard G. Benson outstanding sociology undergraduate student award. Alex Bush (right) was awarded the Rudy Seward Outstanding Master’s student in sociology award and Nichola Driver (left) was awarded the Hiram JU. Friedsam Outstanding Doctorial Student in Sociology Award. (above: photo credit: Nichola Driver).

Nichola Driver has accepted a position as a Visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock. She will be working there for the 20016– 17 school year. She will be teaching courses in the Master of Public Administration program and will also be serving as Campus Direc-tor for the Nonprofit Leadership Studies program.

-Neda Gurbuz was born on January 9th, 2016 to Suhely and Merve Gurbuz! -Murat Ege Celebi was born on May 19th, 2016 to Mehmet and Hilal Celebi. Muret was 7lb and 48 cm (19 inches)! -Seyda Demirhan was born on July 1st, 2016 to Emirhan and Tugba Demirhan! Seyda was 6lbs 9 oz and 20.5 inches! The Sociology department would like to wish all the new parents the best! (photo above: credit: Mehmet Celebi).

University of North Texas 1155 Union Circle #311157 Denton, TX 76203

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ATTENTION

ALUMNI:

Now, share your success stories on our website! You

might see yours in a future issue of The Eagle’s Eye.

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We would like to take some time remember Dr. Leslie Stanley-Stevens who passed

away this spring on June 22nd. In the summer of 1989 Leslie began her work as a Ph.D. student here at UNT and graduated in 1994. Her research interests included par-

enting, the family, and gender issues. While at UNT Leslie received a perfect 4.0 in her course work which also included philosophy and computer science as well as sociology.

Leslie received exceptionally high evaluation marks and praise from the UNT faculty

which were exemplified by her sweeping a variety of university and department awards including UNT’s Outstanding Teaching Fellow Award, outstanding Graduate Women

Award, and the very prestigious Robert Toulouse Award. The Department’s awards in-cluded the Hiram Friedsam Award and Outstanding Teaching Fellow. She also had her

twin sons while working toward her Ph.D. and knew how to have fun, as seen in her monthly movie reviews!

Upon graduation she took the position of Assistant Professor at Tarlton State University. She gained Full professor and recently was named a Regents Professor through her ex-

cellent teaching, research, and service. She also was the first professor at TSU to re-ceive a Research Leave. Leslie, Dr. Rudy Seward (UNT professor emeritus), and Dr.

Dale Yeatts have published many articles together over the years. Her most famous

work may be her book titled: What They Didn’t Know When They Were Expecting ...and How they Became Better Parents (2012). When all is said and done, it is clear that Re-

gents Professor Leslie Stanly– Stevens has been one of the most outstanding persons to graduate from UNT’s sociology Ph.D. program. The Department would like to send their

condolences to her Husband and both sons.

If anyone would like to contribute to Dr. Stanley-Stevens endowment fund: The Dr.

Leslie Stanley-Stevens and Dr. W.H. Stanley, Sr. Scholarship Fund please see the in-structions below:

Make checks payable to Tarleton State University and send to: Box T-0260, Stephen-ville, TX 76402. Please Reference Leslie Stanley-Stevens in the Memo Line.

You may also make a gift card by going to: http://www.tarleton.edu/giving/ and follow the prompts to ‘Give Now’, or the link below will take you directly to the giving website

specifically for making gift cards to a specific scholarship: https://epay.tarleton.edu/C20203_ustores/web/product_detail.jsp?

PRODUCTID=5&SINGLESTORE=true

University of North Texas 1155 Union Circle #311157 Denton, TX 76203

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ATTENTION

ALUMNI:

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might see yours in a future issue of The Eagle’s Eye.

CLICK BELOW:

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Giving

Alumni Homepage

University of North Texas 1155 Union Circle #311157 Denton, TX 76203

Our graduates find jobs in many different places! Here are some of the places that our graduate students have gone! -University of Arkansas at Little Rock -Stephen F. Austin State University -Dallas County Community College -Georgia Southwestern State University -University of Hawaii at West O’ahu -Lock Haven University -Northeastern State University -Pacific University -Turkish War College, Turkey -Willamette University -US Department of Health & Human Services

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There are many ways to support the UNT Sociology depart-

ment. Financial contributions are most welcome, but we also appreci-

ate our alumni who give their time to speak to our current students

and new graduates by providing advice about careers in specific areas.

The Department of Sociology appreciates your financial support. Every

dollar contributed to the department has a direct impact on our stu-

dents. Your gift helps support critical opportunities for students, in-

cluding scholarships, lectures, travel support, and any number of ed-

ucational events that augment the classroom experience. For more in-

formation about additional ways you can help, please contact Dan

Rodeheaver, Chair of the Department, or Fonda Gaynier, Administra-

tive Coordinator, at (940) 565-2296 Read more about Sociology schol-

arships in the Departmental News section of this newsletter. To do-

nate now, click the icon below.

Thank you all. You helped make UNT one of the best 115 doctoral re-

search institutions in the nation!

University of North Texas 1155 Union Circle #311157 Denton, TX 76203

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