American Sociological meeting presentations

My presentation about assimilation vs. enclave-building by Minneapolis-St. Paul Hmong Americans and Korean Americans and Miami Cuban Americans and Haitian Americans early Saturday afternoon (August 2) went OK. I had practiced in my hotel room (discovering it was too long and trying to cut without altering the PowerPoint slides) and then the night before in the actual room I was to present it the next day. (Two pictures – of Minneapolis’ Lake Calhoun and Cuban Americans’ celebrating political transition in Cuba in Miami’s Little Havana – that I used in my PowerPoint slides above.) I was a little rushed. With no reliable clicker, I got one of my co-panelists to change the slides (you might remember this was only the second time I’ve made a presentation in a regular American Sociological Association session, instead of a roundtable).

I went first and made most of my presentation from the floor as did the second presenter. The third presenter stayed in her chair and spoke with no PowerPoint. The final presentation – which was really the best, about activities of indigenous Mexicans – Mayans like the ones across the border in Guatemala with whom we visited on last summer’s mission trip – with pictures – the presenter made from the podium (pictured below). (To view my PowerPoint slides, click here: http://docs.google.com/Presentation?docid=dcth4ct7_1fxwtx227&hl=en )

But a fifth presenter wasn’t able to make it, the moderator had to leave after the third presentation, and two of the four presentations (and perhaps even mine) weren’t very good. I had felt better about my study and my cool PowerPoint with pictures until I started seeing some other presentations that were even better. Friday I heard some presentations about the organizing activities – appealing their sentences – of women who had killed their infants, about Korean Americans’ prejudice against African Americans being rooted in imperialism (as the only African Americans they’ve seen in Korea are gang members in movies and U.S. soldiers, whom many Koreans dislike), and the history of discriminatory law and policy against California’s Mexican American (“Lat crit” analysis).

Early Saturday morning and Sunday I heard some great sociology of religion presentations, including one Sunday that tried to trace how and why religious devotion of parents might help their kids’ school success (and subsequent upward mobility): helping keep them from drinking and taking drugs and having sex, supervising them more closely, teaching them skills like cooperativeness (while still holding them back a little by keeping them centered on religious goals).

-- Perry