Thankfully a lack of updates on this website doesn't necessarily reflect a lack of progress in my studies. And just to prove it, here's a brief rundown of what I've been up to over the past year:
I just got back from the ASA's in Las Vegas. As "sociologically interesting" as the city is I don't think I'd rush to go back, but that's another story for another post. The conference on the other hand was excellent, as were the presentations by my fellow roundtable participants: Rebecca Hanson of the University of Georgia, Letisha Brown of the University of Texas, and Luis Tsukayama Cisneros of the New School. The paper I presented, entitled "The Public Institution: Understanding The Logic of Cultural Production in the Public Sector", has been posted in the CV section of this website.
After auditing Professor Vanina Leschziner's graduate seminar on Culture and Cognition, I had the pleasure of actually teaching the undergraduate version over the past winter to a group of bright and promising students.
Professor Josée Johnston and I are putting the finishing touches on an article on obesity that was recently accepted for publication in Social Theory and Health. More info to come once things are finalized.
Finally, in October I will be returning to my alma mater, the University of Waterloo, to take part in the Emerging Realities conference. I'm currently working on a presentation entitled "In Between Public and Private: Emerging Spaces in Canadian Cities" which will apply some of the ideas I've been developing in my research on the Royal Ontario Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario to a few new spaces which include a suburban strip mall and a sugar factory.
September 21st, 2010
All But Dissertation...
I've just received word that I have passed my second comprehensive exam (in the Sociology of Culture), which means that I have now reached "All But Dissertation" status (or "ABD" for sort). My exam covered three major topics: the definition of culture, the role of symbolic boundaries in social inequality, and cultural capital. I've decided to post my responses online. The answers to my first comprehensive exam (in Social Theory) are also available.
August 25th, 2010
David Harvey on the Great Recession - Animated Edition!
July 5th, 2010
Dissertation Proposal Defended
On June 20th I successfully and officially defended my dissertation proposal in front of my committee (John Hannigan, Judith Taylor, and Daniel Silver). That leaves me with one last step before I can officially achieve "ABD" (all but dissertation) status: passing a second comprehensive exam. I'm planning to write my comprehensive exam in culture at the end of August. Wish me luck.
In other news, I'm teaching a course for the first time. During July and August I'll be instructing SOC 203 (Classical Sociological Theory) at St. George campus.
February 24th, 2010
More Conference Announcements
I will be presenting a paper that I wrote with Prof. Judith Taylor at the Sociology Department (U of T) on Thursday March 4th. The paper we'll be presenting is entitled "Autonomy and Compliance: How Qualitative Sociologists Respond to Institutional Ethical Oversight" and it was recently accepted to the journal Qualitative Sociology. This presentation is part of the Sociology Department's on going "Brown Bag" series. The poster for the presentation is available here.
In other news, Dorothy Li (my fiancée) will be presenting research we collaborated on at the annual conference of the Canadian Association of Gastroenterology here in Toronto. The research will be presented as a poster entitled "A Study of Stigma Against Hepatitis B in the Toronto Chinese Community." A full citation is listed in my CV. The research has also been selected for the American Association's conference in New Orleans this May. I'll post more information about that presentation in the near future.
Last term my colleague Phillipa Chong introduced me to a social science podcast on the BBC entitled "Thinking Allowed". It's hosted by a charismatic British sociologist named Laurie Taylor. Taylor interviews a variety of social scientists about their research on topics ranging from how Jazz musicians improvise, to the Islamist movement in Turkey. And he gets some big name sociologists, including Loïc Wacquant and Howard S. Becker. This show is a great example of how sociology can be made interesting and comprehendible on a non-academic level. It's also a good way to catch up on the latest in sociological research when your eyeballs are too tired to read another journal article. I've added it to the Links section.
January 7th, 2010
First Journal Article on the Way!
I recently received acceptance from the journal Qualitative Sociology for a paper I wrote with Judith Taylor entitled "Autonomy and Compliance: How Qualitative Sociologists Respond to Institutional Ethical Oversight". It will hopefully be appearing in the second half of 2010. Here's the abstract:
Prevailing sociological understandings of institutional ethical review tend to homogenize how faculty members variously respond to them, and are predominantly speculative or theoretical. In this research, we conduct interviews with faculty members who teach and supervise qualitative research at 21 Ph.D. granting departments across Canada, finding three predominant "ethics orientations" among them, with associated cognitive maps and strategic actions. In our analyses, we use these orientations to complicate homogeneous appraisals of social researchers' responses to new bureaucratic requirements, enriching our understanding of how such requirements affect the ways sociologists think about their occupation, approach their research, and mentor successive generations. These ethics orientations suggest the field of sociology is comprised of distinct political cohorts with diverging understandings of ethical review, and by extension, power and intellectual work. The political cohorts we identify, clustered institutionally, demographically, and ideologically along a continuum, universally agree that institutional ethical review decreases scholars' autonomy, but differ on the implications of this loss. For some it signals a more consultative and therefore better approach to knowledge production, while for others it marks the end of an era of unfettered (and superior) intellectual pursuit in sociology.
December 3rd, 2009
I passed my comprehensive exam in sociological theory this term! I posted my responses online. They can be found on my CV or by clicking here.
March 15th, 2009
The Research and Links sections of the site is now online.
About Matt
Matt Patterson is a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at the University of Toronto. This site documents his progress (or lack thereof) in his studies and his research into urban space and iconic architecture. See the Research and CV sections for more information.
The above photo of me was taken by Claudia Hung. The photos in the title bar of this site were taken by me and Dorothy Li.
