Scholarly Excellence and Recognition
Tressie McMillan Cottom's Gittler Prize, a NYT cover story from Daniel Johnson, and a new toolkit from Suzanne van Geuns.
Celebrating Tressie McMillan Cottom
This week, we are celebrating Tressie McMillan Cottom receiving the Gittler Prize from Brandeis University in a ceremony on October 27th.
The Gittler Prize was created in 2007 by the late Professor Joseph B. Gittler to recognize outstanding and lasting scholarly contributions to racial, ethnic and/or religious relations. Tressie delivered an address during the ceremony. Read an excerpt here:
"The times are calling us into a moment. It is a time, I suspect, that feels a lot like Du Bois' moment in time, in part because there are a lot of the same forces. And this is the space where I try to write and I try to intervene and where I try to work, I try to demonstrate and show what it means to critically engage in public discourse in a way that encourages people to be boldly curious at a time when it is very risky to be curious… I hope you do take up arms wherever you end up, and you become a voice for our evolving program of freedom; you take seriously every public of which you are a member, and you invite them into this fight of being a critical voice for the spaces that matter, for information, for art, for learning, for what is fundamentally our most basic of human privileges. And that is the right to be curious”
Brandeis Associate Professor of Sociology Sarah Mayorga nominated Tressie for the Gittler Prize. Mayorga introduced McMillan Cottom in Thursday's ceremony, where she said "Students love Dr. McMillan Cottom's unique voice and beautiful prose. They love how she weaves sociological insight with personal history. She centers the experience and expertise of Black women to show that we better understand the world when we take their perspective seriously. From an instructor's point of view, her work is a godsend."
Join us in congratulating Tressie on receiving the Gittler Prize in recognition of her much-needed work!
🚨This Friday | Religion, Media, and Public Life Symposium🚨
Do you want to join us this Friday for the Symposium on Religion, Media, and Public Life? If so, NOW is the time to get your tickets! We have a few in-person tickets left, and plenty of virtual tickets. All (free) ticket “sales” will close Thursday at 3:00pm.
More info about the symposium can be found here!
Affiliate Highlights
CITAP has a community of research affiliates from all over the world and in many different disciplines. They're experts in mis- and disinformation, digital (in)equality/justice/equity, ethical technology, media and communication, AI, and journalism (among many other topics). The group brings together philosophers, sociologists, legal scholars, historians, information scientists, linguists. Here are a few highlights from our affiliate community this week:
👏👏👏Daniel Johnson, graduate affiliate and Park Doctoral Fellow in the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media, received contributing reporter credit on the NYT Sunday front page story, “A Secret War, Strange New Wounds, and Silence From the Pentagon”.
Daniel pitched what would become this story to the Times last year. The piece is about a secret U.S. offensive in 2016 and 2017 that used an unusual strategy to defeat ISIS—and had a brutally devastating toll on the American troops involved. They assigned Daniel to work with author Dave Philipps last December. Daniel connected Philipps with many sources who likely wouldn’t have talked to the Times otherwise, and Daniel convinced Marine Combat Cameraman Matthew Callahan to work with the Times.
👏👏👏Suzanne van Geuns, a Postdoctoral Researcher at Princeton’s Center for Culture, Society, and Religion, has launched her project “Does Not Compute,” a toolkit for accessing older online conversations.
From Suzanne’s description, “Does Not Compute consists of three modules, one for every decade of networked computing. Each module is composed of videos, useful links, and annotated bibliographies. The videos explain the state of networked social conversation in a particular decade, the links point to relevant archives or repositories, and the annotated bibliographies make it possible to connect new inquiry with existing scholarship.”
Suzanne presented this project at a CITAP Affiliate Research Workshop earlier this fall, and was able to get feedback and recommendations for her annotated bibliography from the CITAP community.
We are hiring!
We are seeking a Postdoctoral Research Associate to join us and work with CITAP & CMLP. This postdoc will serve as a communicator between academic researchers and policymakers (both in government and within technology platforms) Read the full description here and share the posting!
We are seeking a Postdoctoral Research Associate to join us and work with Dr. Francesca Tripodi and the Search Prompt Integrity & Learning Lab (SPILL). Read the full description here and share the posting!
Coming Soon
November
🚨THIS FRIDAY! November 10 at CITAP: Symposium on Religion, Media, and Public Life. Panelists include Whitney Phillips, Samuel Perry, Eden Consenstein, Xavier Pickett, Erika Gault, LeRhonda Manigault-Bryant, and Heidi Campbell. Register to join virtually!
November 14th at 1pm (online): Tressie McMillan Cottom will be a speaker in NYU’s “What’s Next after Affirmative Action for College Admissions?” Register to join virtually!
Cover Photo by Dan Holmes at Brandeis University.