This page lists upcoming events hosted by the Department of Sociology. Click on links below for more information on each activity.

 

Spring 2026

February 25, 12pm (talk)

Dr. René Flores, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Chicago

“Intergenerational Ethnic Attrition Among Hispanics and Asians in the U.S.”

This talk explores the structural and cultural factors shaping Korean adoption and the evolution of Korean adoptee activism.Intergenerational ethnic attrition— when individuals do not identify with their ancestors’ ethnicities—remains poorly understood. Sociological frameworks offer competing predictions about its prevalence among U.S. Hispanics and Asians. While Classic Assimilation Theory anticipates ethnic identities to fade across generations, racialization perspectives suggest that non-Europeans will experience little attrition due to enduring racism. In contrast, racialized assimilation predicts significant within-group variation in identification driven by traits like phenotype. To assess which theory best predicts the identity choices of Hispanic and Asian descendants, we conducted a nationally representative survey of 5,800 U.S. adults with detailed family histories.
rené flores wearing a blue blazer and black shirt, standing outdoors with a background of greenery and sunlight filtering through leaves

April 10, 2:30pm (William Form Lecture)

Dr. Joanna Pepin, Assistant Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto

“Do Cohorts Differ? Aging, Family Transitions, and the Resilience of Gendered Work–Family Desires During Early Adulthood”

Young people’s approval of women in the public sphere has plateaued at high levels, support for mothers’ employment grew substantially before continuing slowing, and conventional ideology about gender in families waned for decades before showing a minor rebound. Contemporary young people express greater openness to a variety of future division‑of‑labor scenarios, although the breadwinner-homemaker arrangement remains desired. Given these trends, this talk presents new evidence using longitudinal panel data (1976–2021) tracing how desired work-family arrangements evolve as young adults age and encounter turning points such as marriage and parenthood. I will show that although recent cohorts enter adulthood with less desire for traditional arrangements than earlier cohorts, aging and family transitions continue to shift many toward more conventional preferences, limiting cohort-replacement effects. I will argue that the enduring power of gendered assumptions about work and family labor has been understated, posing challenges for the trajectory of the gender revolution.

 

joanna pepin wearing glasses, a light blazer, and a black top, standing beside a stone column with intricate carvings in an archway.

April 22, 12pm (talk)

Dr. Alexandra (Sasha) Killewald, Professor of Sociology, University of Michigan

“Trends in the Gender Pay Gap: Narrowing Starting Gaps and Persistent Life-Course Divergence”

The US gender pay gap has narrowed substantially since 1980, but more slowly since 1990. We ask how these trends have been shaped by the combination of changes in gender pay gaps upon labor market entry and changes in how gender pay inequalities evolve across the life course. We find that young women in later cohorts consistently gained ground in pay relative to their male peers. Later cohorts of women launched their careers from more advantageous starting points, and these gains in starting points suffice to explain the entire narrowing of the cross-sectional gender pay gap 1980–2020. By contrast, changes across cohorts in the gender gap in wage growth with age were mixed and offsetting. Together, our results help shed light on both progress toward pay parity and its stall. Furthermore, they suggest that women are unlikely to achieve pay parity if future gains come only from narrowing the wage gap in young adulthood: even if young women were to reach pay parity with young men, the aggregate gender pay gap will persist as long as rates of pay growth with age do not converge.

sasha killewald wearing a bright blue jacket and hoop earrings, standing outdoors with green foliage in the background.
Last modified
01/14/2026 - 2:30 pm