News & Events
Charlene Holkenbrink-Monk finds new research inspiration during Fulbright in Spain
A pivot provided focus on community-based murals in Málaga applicable to future San Diego research.
The cultural immersion in Málaga proved fruitful. Charlene Holkenbrink-Monk, lecturer in sociology, won a Fulbright at the University of Málaga in Spain where she spent five months. Her goal was to help Spanish students build English language skills by utilizing photographs and sociological concepts.
Trying to recruit students for the project proved futile — undergraduate students were simply too busy with other projects.
So, she shifted the research to match the environment. After thoughtful attention to the community and culture of Málaga, she discovered a different research path. She developed strong bonds with community members who helped her fully embrace the vibrancy of the city. It was the visual ethnography — public murals — throughout the city that helped her come up with a new plan.
Read the full story on the CAL News site.
"Sports in the Borderlands, the Borderlands of Sports - A Case From Skateboarding"
A talk by Andrea Buchetti, Ph.D. (University of Padua)
Thursday, December 4, 2025
4-6 p.m.
in Storm Hall 205
Reception with Italian refreshments to follow
Borderlands are diffuse cultural matrices through which power, desire, and social creativity are negotiated daily. I articulate this perspective by building on my fieldwork on skateboarding at the U.S.-Mexico border in dialogue with the contemporary anthropology of sports and popular cultures.
Sponsored by the Departments of Chicana and Chicano Studies and Sociology, the Center for Latin American Studies, and Comparative International Studies (Italian Program), the Center for Skateboarding, Action Sports, and Social Change, the Surf and Skate Studies Collaborative, and the Master of Arts in Liberal Arts & Sciences (MALAS) Program.
A long strange journey where psychedelic science, sociology, and academia converge
Alumnus Jarrett Rose researches the cultural contexts of psychedelic-assisted therapy for trauma healing, self-transformation, and collective consciousness.
A bumpy start in high school didn't stop him from heading toward a focused and fruitful life as a professor who analyzes the impacts of psilocybin use on society.
For Jarrett Rose (M.A. sociology, 2016) – now an assistant professor in the Community and Behavioral Health program and the Department of Sociology at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in New York – the academic journey has been filled with obstacles and successes.
Read the full article on the CAL News site.
Past News and Events
Steve Hawk, former editor of SURFER Magazine, gives guest lecture at SDSU
Engaging talk gives students insight into how surfing promotes cross-cultural relationships across the globe
By SDSU CAL News Team
Monday, April 28, 2025
Steve Hawk, former editor of SURFER Magazine and vice chair of The Skateboard Project (formerly the Tony Hawk Foundation), visited San Diego State University in March to give a guest lecture in Professor Michael Roberts’ sociology course, Modern Surfing and Globalized Society.
Read the story on SDSU NewsCenter.
SDSU assistant professor teaches about the global impact of skateboarding
KNSD 7 San Diego
April 21, 2025
San Diego is one of the birthplaces of skateboarding, so it makes sense that a local college is at the forefront of skateboarding research, education and innovation. NBC 7’s Nichelle Medina introduces us to Dr. Neftalie Williams, who’s studying and teaching about the global impact of skateboarding.
Watch the video on the KNSD site.
Fulbright Awarded
We are proud to announce that Charlene Holkenbrink-Monk was selected as a Fulbright U.S. Scholar for 2024-2025. She will be performing postdoctoral research at the University of Malaga in Spain.
New Interviews
Neftalie Williams was interviewed for the news story, “The Growth of Detroit Skateparks” for WDIV-Detroit. Watch the interview.
California Live’s Danielle Nottingham visits San Diego State University to catch up with professor, Neftalie Williams, who is on a mission to create diplomacy through skateboarding. Watch the interview.
Just Published!
Congratulations to Department Chair, Norah Shultz, for her new book: Revising the Curriculum and Co-Curriculum to Engage Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.
Entering at a critical time in the national dialogue on higher education and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), this edited book presents case studies from six institutions that have successfully enacted curricular change. An inspiring and practical read for higher education faculty, leaders, and practitioners, this book demonstrates that curricular change is an achievable, worthwhile, and urgently necessary pursuit.
Sociology in the Public Discourse: Navigating Troubled Times
Department of Sociology Annual Lecture Series
Wednesday, November 8, 2023
3-5 p.m.
Conrad Prebys Aztec Student Union Student Union Theatre
New Book
Amy Wong, lecturer for the Department of Sociology, published a new book, Stories of Survival: The Paradox of Suicide Vulnerability and Resiliency among Asian
American College Students. The book explores the paradox of suicide vulnerability and resiliency among Asian
American college students. It uses a strength-based approach to understand how Asian
American college students live with their suicidal tendencies and offers practical
recommendations for colleges and universities to address the mental health challenges
of their students.
Congratulations Amy!
Pirates of the Contact Zone: Or, How to Hijack Capitalism through Skateboarding South
to the U.S.-Mexico Border
Featuring Andrea Buchetti
Roots of the Revolts: Segregation, Serial Displacement, and Gentrification in St. Louis, Baltimore, and Beyond
Featuring Derek Hyra, Ph.D.
Thursday, April 6, 2023 | 12-1 p.m.
Conrad Prebys Aztec Student Union Legacy Suite Room 372
By investigating the legacy of serial displacement in the St. Louis region and Baltimore, this presentation argues certain urban housing and community development policies over time perpetuate segregation, poverty concentration, and gentrification that create a contemporary context for aggressive policing, Black frustrations, and unrest.
Derek Hyra is a professor in the Department of Public Administration and Policy within the School of Public Affairs at American University. His research focuses on processes of neighborhood change, with an emphasis on housing, urban politics, and race.
Co-sponsored with the School of Public Affairs.
Feeling Politics: The Role of Emotions in Environmental Racism Fights
Featuring Nadia Kim, Ph.D.
Wednesday, March 22, 2023 | 2 3:30 p.m.
Finch Conference Room, AL 660
This talk draws on Nadia Kim's book "Refusing Death" to explore how we must grasp environmental injustice, as well as other forms of injustice, through a lens of physical and emotional violence and neglect. More specifically, Kim addresses how we best understand this systemic injustice by examining how communities of color receive it and fight back.
Nadia Y. Kim is Professor of Asian & Asian American Studies and affiliated faculty in Sociology at Loyola Marymount University. Her research focuses on US race and citizenship injustices and on fights against environmental racism/classism.
Co-sponsored with the Center for Asian and Pacific Studies, Sustainability, Chicana
and Chicano Studies, Women's Studies, and Asian American Studies.
Faculty Research Hour featured
“Stories of Survival: The Paradox of Suicide Vulnerability and Resiliancy among Asian American College Students” - Amy Wong
“Mexican Railroad Workers and Social Change” - Michael Calderon-Zaks
“Roll and Flow: The Cultural Politics of Skateboarding and Surfing” - Michael Roberts
Sociology Research Hour: Mexican Railroad Workers and Social Change
with Michael Calderon-Zaks, Ph.D.
Friday, March 17, 2023 | 2-3 p.m.
NH 229
This talk focuses on my research on Mexican railroad workers in the US through different social changes during the 20th century. Mexicans made up ninety percent of southwestern US track crews from around 1920 to the 1950s. The track crews were the most radicalized divisions of labor in each region, making this study an ideal intersection between race and class. This talk covers the phase in which Mexicans succeeded Chinese and Japanese workers on the tracks by the 1920s, two attempted organizing campaigns in the 1930s and 1940s, and how technological changes eliminated most of the jobs on the railroad right of ways. This talk also offers lessons in light of recent events on the railroads.
The Makers Assemble: The Volunteer Phenomenon of PPE Makers
Thursday, Sept. 29, 2022 | 7 p.m. | Scripps Cottage
Flattening the Curve During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the U. S.
In March 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic surfaced with great force, revealing that the national supply of personal protective equipment (PPE) was dangerously underwhelming. Hospitals and clinics, nursing homes and assisted living centers, funeral home workers, essential workers, first responders, and schools at all levels were requesting immediately that someone (anyone who could) step up to make desperately-needed PPE (face masks, hospital gowns, hospital caps, ear savers, and face shields). Volunteer quilters, sewists and 3D printer enthusiasts emerged in a groundswell of life-saving gendered disaster response, creating PPE for those in need.
Marybeth C. Stalp, University of Northern Iowa, Kimberly Kelly and Braden Leap, Mississippi State University collected data from 740 makers through qualitative phone interviews and an online qualitative questionnaire from July 2020 to January 2021. They consider makers broadly, and include makers to be people with sewing and 3D printing skills, those who cut fabric and elastic and assembled mask kits for sewists to pick up, sew, and drop off for distribution, 3D printing groups that cut and printed face shield parts and ear savers and distributed them in person or mailed them across the country to those in need.
The purpose of this research is to highlight and understand the groundswell of volunteer work accomplished by makers: quilters, sewists, and 3D printing enthusiasts. The authors focus on how makers, and in particular quilters and sewists, generously devoted time money and attention to flattening the curve and caring for their communities.