What is the best advice one can give to a new student at Hamilton College? This was the open-ended question posed by Dan Chambliss, the Eugene M. Tobin Distinguished Professor of Sociology at this year’s final installment of the popular “Tell Me What You Know” lecture series hosted by the Emerson Literary Society.

At the recent annual meeting of the Southern Sociological Society in Atlanta, (April 24-28), Associate Professor of Sociology Jenny Irons presented as part of a panel she co-organized with a colleague, University of Louisville Professor Karen Christopher.

Associate Professor of Sociology Jenny Irons reacted quickly to a serious error made by The Daily Show's Jon Stewart last week when, in Iron’s words, he “lampooned Dick Molpus.” The white former Secretary of State and civil rights champion, Molpus was responsible for registering Mississippi’s 1995 decision to ratify the 13th amendment abolishing slavery. Irons, who had worked for Molpus in the 1990s, wrote an opinion piece in the Huffington Post titled “Civil Rights Champion Falsely Accused by Jon Stewart” in which she corrected Stewart's mischaracterization.

In in the wake of an exam boycott recently at Johns Hopkins University, InsideHigherEd reported on a different boycott 25 years earlier on Hamilton's campus.  "Game of Theories," the story of Eugene M. Tobin Distinguished Professor of Sociology Dan Chambliss’ challenge to students in his introductory sociology courses and how first-year student John Werner '92 successfully  met it, was retold on Feb. 22.

Machiavelli. Darwin. Paine. These men changed lives with their writing, affecting how millions thought about themselves and their place in the world.  Dan Chambliss, the Eugene M. Tobin Distinguished Professor of Sociology, and Al Kelly, the Edgar B. Graves Professor of History, have a similar effect on the Hamilton students they teach in their Great Books seminar—albeit on a slightly smaller scale.

Author and University of Pennsylvania professor Annette Lareau came to Hamilton on Nov. 14 to lecture on her study of social stratification in America.  Lareau is the Stanley I. Shear Professor of Sociology in the School of Arts and Sciences at Penn.  She is best known for her book Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life.  Her lecture was part of the Levitt Center’s Inequality and Equity series.

Stephen Ellingson, associate professor of sociology, presented his paper titled "Jazz, Gender, and the Color Line" at both campuses of Mohawk Valley Community College (MVCC) on Oct. 19.

Professor of Sociology Dennis Gilbert was interviewed about America’s middle class for CNBC.com and for l'Unità, an Italian newspaper. Gilbert is the author of The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality (Sage, 2011)

An American Public Media’s Marketplace segment focused on a recent Pew Research Center study of what people think it takes to be middle class included quotes from an interview with Professor of Sociology Dennis Gilbert. During the Aug. 31 segment titled “Working your way into the middle class,” Gilbert said  that people’s priorities have changed. Gilbert is the author of The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality (Sage, 2011) and recently discussed the topic on Connecticut Public Radio.

Professor of Sociology Dennis Gilbert was a guest on the Connecticut Public Radio (WNPR) morning call-in show “Where We Live” on Aug. 28.  He was part of a conversation on the middle class. Participants discussed political candidates’ views on the middle class as well as how it’s defined and how politicians use the term. Gilbert is the author of The American Class Structure in an Age of Growing Inequality.