NC State Sociology's SIS Workshop

Sociology Paper Workshop: Structures, Identities, and Society (SIS)

NC State University

Draft as of March 10, 2023 (to be modified with suggestions from participants)

The manifest function: To give people feedback on their sociological working papers with the goal of being able to help them publish a fantastic paper or article.

The latent function: To give sociologists at NC State (and other related departments or institutions) the chance to work together on projects, with a common goal of strengthening and increasing interactions.  

Outline of the workshop process in steps:

1. Someone offers up their paper to be reviewed by students and faculty in the department. The paper is emailed out at least a week before the workshop for everyone to read and develop feedback

2. Someone is assigned the role of discussant. At the beginning of the workshop, the discussant introduces the paper and offers comments about its contributions and any flaws they see in it. The discussant should take 5-10 minutes in their dissection of the paper.

3. After the discussant introduces the paper, the paper writer(s) can respond to the discussant’s feedback.

4. The floor is then open to questions and comments from the audience. Questions around methods, theory, and substantive findings are all important. So having a diverse set of opinions on the piece is important.

5. After that, the floor is open for a discussion between the audience and the paper writer(s).

Things to note: 

1. It is often easy to give critical feedback in ways that dismiss and knock down rather than aid or build up. In contrast, participants in the workshops will ideally develop skills for giving feedback in generative ways. 

2. Part of giving feedback is finding ways to be constructive even when a topic might be far afield from one’s home topics. Participating in the workshops will help people develop skills in being facile speakers in generalist sociological discussions (and perhaps even in interdisciplinary discussions) and not just in our specialty niches.

3. Sometimes these workshops can become helpful enough that outside speakers might come in and offer their working papers up for critique by our workshop. For example, UNC’s Culture+Politics workshop recently invited Tressie McMillan Cottom to present to their workshop. We can think of this as an opportunity to develop relationships with sociologists outside of NC State.