Congratulations to Prof. Robbie Kahn for the publication of Milk Teeth: A Memoir of a Woman and Her Dog (Rutgers University Press, December 2008). This creative nonfiction book recounts her unexpectedly disturbing relationship with her dog Laska. In the book she recounts how, over a year's time, she came to understand the influence of her own past on on her responses to Laska. The book is testimony to the importance of friends, family, reading, faith, nature, and the reflective power of writing.

Professor Edward Walker has recently been selected to be a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation Fellow in Health Policy Research at the University of Michigan. This fellowship is one of the most selective in the social sciences. The program selects twelve promising recent doctoral recipients in Sociology, Political Science, and Economics out of a pool over over one hundred competitive candidates. During the fellowship, Prof. Walker will extend his research on professional grassroots lobbying by examining stakeholder mobilization on health policy issues. His recent article on grassroots lobbying appeared in the American Sociological Review, and related research is underway with funding from the National Science Foundation.

Prof. Nick Danigelis and Prof. Steve Cutler have been interviewed and discussed throughout the U.S. media this year, in outlets such as The New York Times, the Stanford Social Innovation Review, Reuters, and UVM's The View. All this is regarding their recently published election-relevant research (with Penn State's Melissa Hardy) on "Population Aging, Intracohort Aging, and Sociopolitical Attitudes" in the American Sociological Review. The piece in SIR, "Old Dogs, New Opinions," suggests that, contrary to stereotypes, people grow more liberal and tolerant as they age.

Prof. Lutz Kaelber's course "Disability as Deviance" has helped create the definitive website documenting the history of American eugenics. Many U.S. states passed laws in the first decades of the 20th Century that led to the sterilization of more than 60,000 Americans who were mentally disabled or ill, who belonged to a socially disadvantaged group or were considered morally corrupt. As documented in UVM's The View, the website built by Kaelber and his students is becoming one of the definitive sources for documenting the details of one of the darker, lesser-known chapters in U.S. history.

The Sociology Dept. welcomes new assistant professor Katrinell Davis. Prof. Davis, from UC Berkeley, studies links between social stratification, the actions of state and labor market institutions, and the changing expressions of racialization within American society. At UVM, Davis will teach classes on Race and Ethnic Relations, as well as courses exploring the intersections between race, gender, and work trends within the American labor market.