Receptions

When I’ve got time, I try to go to at least a couple of the many receptions at the Association for the Sociology of Religion and American Sociological Association meetings. Sometimes the food is good (if there’s any left), I run into old friends, and I get to meet new people. At one of the ASR receptions, I met half a dozen New School sociology grad students and very recent grads (some pictured above), and I met some more at an ASA Sociology of Culture section reception.

At another section reception (Racial and Ethnic Minorities and Asia and Asian American sections) I met two interesting people: a sociologist at Denison University, the private liberal arts school east of Columbus in Granville, OH (near Newark – near where Stephanie and I had lunch with an old acquaintance and a campus that Stephanie, Vincent, and I visited (during their alumni weekend) during a long afternoon/evening in Licking County (in May 1996). I talked with this person (Anita Waters) (pictured below) about the remote chance of Vincent going to Denison (I’d actually looked at their Web site once with this in mind – though the only Ohio school we’ve looked at even half seriously is Wittenberg in Springfield) and an even more interesting topic: my dissertation topic. I reminisced about interviewing a Denison religious studies professor and former chaplain for the segment of my dissertation research about the development of the abortion conflict in Central Ohio. Much to my surprise, said my new acquaintance, Dave Woodyard is still teaching at Denison. I also reminisced about an unusual series of events more recently, when a Denison undergraduate working on her senior paper asked me – by titles – for a whole list of the conference papers associated with that research. I didn’t have them all on pdf files (and in fact most of them are in WordPerfect), but – as I started to scan them – the student apparently switched subjects. I was momentarily excited about this request (that someone would actually want to read about my research – and I always hope some spur like that might get me to try to do something else with the research.)

I was also excited to meet another interesting person at the Racial and Ethnic Minorities section reception: a Japanese American professor (Kumiko Nemoto) (pictured below) at the school at the top of Vincent’s to-attend list: Western Kentucky University. You might recall that, until Vincent went to Denmark this summer, he was interested in taking Japanese and possibly Asian studies classes (Wittenberg was strong in this) and going on study abroad to Japan. (At this point Vincent would probably like to major in Danish studies and go for four years of study abroad in Denmark – neither of which is likely to happen.) What was exciting about this – assuming Vincent’s interests might broaden and revert a little bit – was that I bet Vincent will take one of this professor’s class, because she teaches a sociology of Japan class.

-- Perry