Sociology Graduate Student Publication News

Congratulations to the following Ph.D. in Sociology Graduate students on their recently scholarly endeavors!

Lindy Olive – 3rd Year Ph.D. Student

Abstract

In 2018, a “Blue Apron type” meal kit for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) was announced. Like many food initiatives, there was no input from the intended audience. In contrast, we used community-based research (CBR, n = 65) to design a meal kit for families with low income. However, we were unable to separate our approach from the dominant framework, hegemonic nutrition, predominantly led by white experts. We center the voices of Black women whose role in the initiative were otherwise limited. Food reformers using CBR ought to interrogate hegemonic nutrition as “community” is not inherently transformative.

Olive, L., & Worosz, M. R. (2024). Better Than Blue Apron? The Dominant Nutrition Framework Packed in a Community-Based Meal Kit. Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1080/19320248.2024.2348564

Meghan Watts – 6th Year Ph.D. Student

Abstract

In this relational ethnography, we write as two white afab genderqueer/trans parents who often find ourselves at best pulled between spaces and parts of ourselves, and at worst pressured to choose between the false dichotomy of our “illegible” place within transness/queerness and “aparent” place within motherhood. Weaving together autoethnographic vignettes of our lived experiences with the writings of QTBIPOC thinkers and pedagogues and their anti-racist white comrades, we reflect on themes of liminality, loneliness, hope, grieving, and love in mothering, kin, and community building and theorize, as queer trans (m)othering mother-ers, about the trans potentialities of being/becoming-with-longing queerly.

Watts, M. A., & Dominguez, C. M. (2024). A (m)Other’s Work Is Becoming Undone: Liminal Belonging and Trans Potentialities. Qualitative Inquiry, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/10778004241260645