THEME & CALL FOR SESSIONS:
“Left Behind Sociology”: Re-visiting Old Ideas, Old Theories, and Understudied People
Join us April 3rd – 6th, 2014, in Omaha to celebrate our discipline and our ideas! Organize a session. Share your expertise in a professional workshop. Exercise your intellectual curiosity. Split the social atom. Improve your teaching. Socialize and have fun!
The theme for the 2014 meeting is “Left-Behind Sociology.” The Left Behind series of books by Tim LaHaye and Jerry B. Jenkins has become wildly popular nationally, especially among evangelical Christians. The books describe a post-apocalyptic world where God has immediately removed her followers to heaven in the end-of-times Rapture, leaving the “left-behind” population to deal with the horrors that follow. The books have sold millions of copies, in part by promising an escape to a utopian future for a select set of believers while the remaining population suffers during the Biblical end times.
The “Left-Behind Sociology” theme is an attempt to get us to focus on people and ideas that are “left behind” in current research, scholarship, and teaching. In our zeal to reach conclusions, affect students, and change communities, what types of people, ideas, and theories have been left behind? What are the implications of doing this for sociology as a discipline?? Do these omissions harm our credibility with publics we attempt to influence and those whose causes we champion?? Who has been run over by our cars as we’ve rushed down the highway to the latest born-again revival?
Most importantly, the 2014 meetings in Omaha are an opportunity to exercise our sociological imaginations. Omaha is my home town and there will be all the scholarship, fellowship, and fun that we can jam into three days. See you in Omaha!
Kevin T. Leicht, President-Elect / Program Chair
Kimberly Maas, Student Director / Program Assistant