CANCELED: Feeling Ethnographic: Close Examination of Emotions in Ethnographic Writing

Feeling Ethnographic: A Close Examination of Emotions in Ethnographic Writing

A Conversation with Michael Walker and Reuben Jonathan Miller

Michael Walker, PhD, Beverly and Richard Fink Professor in Liberal Arts,

Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities

For the second event of the On Theory and Method Lecture Series, we welcome back Dr. Michael L. Walker, author of the award winning Indefinite: Doing Time in Jail. Dr. Walker is a sociologist with broad research interests in stratification, social control, punishment, and social psychology, which he translates into studies of race relations, carceral patterns, identities, emotions, and time. His book, Indefinite won the 2022 Charles H. Cooley Award for Best Recent Book from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction.

Dr. Walker will be joined in conversation by Reuben Jonathan Miller. Miller is an Associate Professor in UChicago’s Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice and the Department of Race, Diaspora and Indigeneity and is a research professor at the American Bar Foundation. Professor Miller is the author of Halfway Home: Race, Punishment and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration, which follows the lives of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. The recipient of many awards, Professor Miller was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2022.

For this second installment, Walker and Miller will discuss the role of emotion in ethnographic writing, and discuss the importance of “feeling” a social situation of people we’ve learned, as a society, to throw away—the incarcerated, the poor, and the racialized.

Hybrid Event: In-Person and via Livestream available.

This event is free and open to the public; Registration is required.

1.5-hour CEU’s available. This program satisfies 1.5 hours toward the cultural competence requirement for social workers. Eligibility for CEU’s requires indication at registration and attendance to the live event.

About the Author

Dr. Michael Walker is the author of Indefinite: Doing Time in Jail, which won the 2022 Charles H. Cooley Award for Best Recent Book from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. The first ethnographic study of life inside an American jail published in the last three decades, Indefinite is a beautifully written, field defining study of what Walker calls penal living. It brings the reader into the visceral and emotional landscape of incarceration, revealing what it means to do time and what the social situation of jail residents tells us about the use of punishment in the United States.

About the Moderator

Professor Walker will be joined in conversation by Reuben Jonathan Miller, Associate Professor in UChicago’s Crown Family School of Social Work, Policy, and Practice and the Department of Race, Diaspora and Indigeneity and is research professor at the American Bar Foundation. Professor Miller is the author of Halfway Home: Race, Punishment and the Afterlife of Mass Incarceration, which follows the lives of incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people. The recipient of many awards, Professor Miller was named a MacArthur Fellow in 2022.

About the Book

Indefinite is a beautifully written, field defining ethnography of what Walker calls penal living. It brings the reader into the visceral and emotional landscape of the jail, revealing what it means to do time and what the social situation of jail residents tells us about the use of punishment in the United States. Professor Walker is also the recipient of the American Society of Criminology’s 2018 Joan Petersilia Outstanding Article Award for his paper, “Race Making in a Penal Institution,” which was published in the American Journal of Sociology.

About the Series

“On Theory and Method” is a lecture series that brings innovative social scientists who have written field defining books into conversation with graduate students and members of the public who aspire to bring their research findings to the page. The series focuses on the writing process, how to make sense of what we find in social research and how to render those findings in ways that resonate within and beyond the academy.