Announcements

Amy L. Johnson, Assistant Professor of Sociology, was awarded in May 2025 a prestigious Paul J. Franz, Jr Fellowship research award.  Dr. Johnson’s research examines how the 21^st century focus on mental health has contributed to social division rather than universal acceptance. The endowment grant will support her book project, tentatively titled Our Mental Health, Their Mental Illness. 

Her research traces how mental health and illness became widely shared cultural ideas, extending far beyond their medical roots with consequences for social stratification. Using computational and qualitative text analysis of two sources of cultural representations—major American newspapers from 1980 to 2020 and the social media platform Reddit from 2019 to 2023—the book examines how the American public understands mental health and mental illness as two sides of a social, not just medical, boundary.

We are pleased to share the news that our recent graduate Amadea Lehoczky Escobar was awarded the Campbell Prize for undergraduate research.  Her paper, Networks of Influence: How Media, Identity, and Relationships Shaped College Students’ Behavior in the 2024 Presidential Election, was originally presented as her senior thesis.  Amadea graduated with a BA in Sociology and Journalism and earned departmental honors for this paper,   Congratulatons, Amadea!

The Campbell Prize, named in honor of Donald T. Campbell, the first department chair for Social Relations (now Sociology & Anthropology), offers  $1000 prizes to one undergraduate and one graduate student each year for a paper in the social sciences that is rated as "of the highest quality, methodological originality and societal significant, as embodied int eh work of the late Dr. Campbell.  (as described on the Campbell Prize webpage) 

Her 2024 PNAS publication was cited in one of the court cases to protect birthright citizenship. The paper is used to make the case that the threat of deportation has widespread mental health consequences.

You can read the case documents on the Supreme Court's docket here and see the research paper cited by searching "Amy L. Johnson."   This case has now joined with two others and is on the SCOTUS docket; you can follow it on scotus blog
https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/case-files/trump-v-casa-inc/. Oral arguments were presented yesterday.

With 83 majors spread across its three programs, the Department of Sociology & Anthropology is celebrating its 28 graduating seniors with a special Thesis Celebration Dinner on May 1, 2025. 

The department acknowledges and congratulates our students on their capstone projects.

Honors Thesis

Maria Alvarado - Brown Wounds: Self-Esteem in Women of Color at Predominantly White Institutions

Nicole Donvito - Anomie and Mental Health in College Students

Zenus Francis - Class, Categories, and Intentional Cranial Modification in the Ancient Andes: A Meta-Analysis

Heather Peterson - Language Culture in Higher Education: Language Ideologies, Linguistic Practices, and Social Belonging for Multilingual Students

Maya Radic - War and Worship: the drivers of social unrest in multi-ethnic states

Paige Rhinehart - Resocialization and Sororities at Lehigh University

Amadea Lehoczky Escobar - Information, Identity, and Networks: Decoding College Students’ Political Behavior in 2024

Hannah Levi - Displaced by Climate Change: A Global Comparative Historical Analysis

Supervised Research

Aurora Bertoldo

Jane Burke

Nicole Donvito

Angeris Encarnacion

Apple Neveu

Alyssa Ruiz

Internships

Recognizing that internships are a practical way to get some experience and explore a career path, 10 students chose internships.

Justin Butler – Lehigh Athletics

Cate Coffino – Bright Horizons Daycare

Jasmine Elrafei – Clear Path Wellness

Trinity Key – Lehigh University/United Nations Partnership and United Nations Foundation

Katie Marker – Bright Horizons Daycare

Samantha Santana – M.I.R.A Resources

Blayre Walters – SEPTA and Turning Point Restaurants

Faith Dobosiewicz - Lehigh Athletics - Sports Communications

Colleen McQuillan - Lehigh Athletics - LEAD Scholars Program

Willa Werwaiss - Lehigh Athletics - Leadership & Marketing

Apprentice Teaching

Blayre Walters – SOC 001  Introduction to Sociology with Dr LaToya Council

Kwynsky Miguel – ANTH 212– Doing Archaeology with Dr Allison Mickel

Other Achievements

SOAN congratulates Claire Kirshenbaum, who was awarded a Boren Scholarship to study Bahasa Indonesian language at the State University of Malang this academic year.  Claire is a double major in Sociology & Anthropology and Global Studies.

Photo Credit: Marcus Smith

IPUMS presents  awards for published and for student research each year.  Recently Dr Amy Johnson was announced  as the winner for the IPUMS Health Surveys award, along with 3 co-authors (Christopher Levesque, Neil A. Lewis Jr., and Asad L. Asad).  The article is entitled "Deportation Threat Predicts Latino US Citizens and Noncitizens’ Psychological Distress, 2011 to 2018"

The authors document increasing levels of anxiety and depression among Latinos between 2011 and 2018 and study how that varies by citizenship status. They measure the relative effect on psychological distress of dramatic policy changes (e.g., DACA announced, Trump’s first election) versus the general institutional and social environment of deportation threat (i.e., monthly DHS detainee requests and monthly Google searches on “immigration”), and they find the latter to be more impactful. This innovative study shows how joining harmonized NHIS data with other data sources can illuminate contextual influences on mental health.

See the full article here.

Defining who is "middle class" is not as straightforward as you  might think.  For a story entitled "Empowering a Thriving Black Middle Class" the Urban Institute interviewed Dr LaToya Council, who uses a broader definition than just typical measures of status.  She looks for economic security for generations.  The Black Family Thriving Initiative has similar thinking - they aim to "reframe the narrative of being Black and middle class in America."  Dr Council's own research focuses on middle class married couples and aims to deepen our understanding of how race and gender oppression impact Black middle-class couples, utilizing archival research and interviews. 

https://www.urban.org/stories/black-middle-class-wealth?utm_source=urban_social&utm_medium=linkedin&utm_campaign=black_middle_class&utm_term=pipeline_requests&utm_content=race_and_equity

Anthropology major Zenus Francis recently attended his first professional association to present on his research.  As part of a senior thesis project, supervised by Dr Armando Anzellini, Zenus researched social class, identity, and cranial modification in the ancient Andes.   He presented his findings in a poster session  the American Association of Biological Anthropologists annual meeting in Baltimore over spring break.

The research sought to investigate the relationship between cranial modification and eliteness across the Ancient Andes to determine if modification was a method of ascribing status. Zenus hypothesized that cranial modification would be more prevalent in sites where it was associated with eliteness than in sites where it was indeterminate of elite status. Methods: he conducted a meta analysis on the relationship between elite status and cranial modification from a data base of sites across the Andes region. I built a dataset that differentiated sites where cranial modification was associated with elite status and where it determined to not be associated and conducted statistical analysis comparing populations of unmodified and modified individuals. This analysis was conducted between sites, within sites, and across temporal periods to understand the dynamics and change of these patterns. Results: Using a chi-square test he was unable to show any statistical difference between eliteness and modification populations. Additionally, he was unable to observe a statistical difference in the unmodified and modified populations across all sites. Conclusion: Conducting a meta-analysis of cranial modification across the Andes region, he was unable to support the hypothesis that cranial modification was a tool for inscribing elite status. Conducting a meta-scale analysis of cranial modification can help us understand large geographical and temporal patterns of cranial modification, which can illuminate its relationship to social structure.

Zenus is a senior with a double major in anthropology and psychology.  After graduation this May, he will pursue a Masters in Anthropology at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, Canada.

The Critical Urban Anthropology Association selected Dr Samantha Maurer Fox's paper for the prestigious City and Society Best Paper Prize at this week's annual conference. The paper, "A City of newcomers: migration and solidarity in the former East Germany" was first published May 17, 2024 and "examines how urban temporalities have come to alternately foster and hinder migrants' incorporation in the larger social body."  Here's a link to the article: https://doi.org/10.1111/ciso.12484

Pictured with Dr Fox (center) are Kristin Monroe, editor of City and Society and the executive editor, Andrew Newman.  CUAA is  a section of the American Anthropology Association, which is holding its annual meeting in Tampa, Fl this week (November 20-23, 2024).