Mitchell Duneier, author of acclaimed urban ethnography Sidewalk, to speak at 13th annual Qualitative Research Conference April 20-21
Sociology professor Dr. Mitchell Duneier, an urban ethnographer who teaches at Princeton University and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, will give the plenary address at the University of St. Thomas’ 13th annual Midwest Qualitative Research Conference.
The conference, April 20-21 on the university’s Minneapolis campus, attracts some 200 researchers, educators and doctoral students who use a variety of qualitative research methods to understand the worlds in which they work and live. Presentations will be given on topics in education, sociology, ministry, social work, women’s studies, health care, public policy, business, engineering and law.
Duneier will discuss and show his recent film “Sidewalk,” which documents the lives of street vendors in New York City. “Sidewalk,” funded by the National Science Foundation, grew out of Duneier’s urban ethnography of the same name. The book received the 2000 C. Wright Mills Award of the Society for the Study of Social Problems and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
Duneier received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and his research interests include urban sociology, poverty, social inequality and the moral economy of the poor. His first book, Slim’s Table: Race, Respectability and Masculinity, sprang from his doctoral dissertation; it received the 1994 Distinguished Scholarly Publication Award from the American Sociological Association. His dissertation researched involved listening to the stories of men at a cafeteria in Chicago’s Hyde Park for four years.
A frequent editorialist for The New York Times and other newspapers, he now is working on Andrea’s Dream, a book drawn from a series of articles he wrote for the Chicago Tribune about that city’s word processors, whom he compares to analogous workers in Third World countries.
Duneier also has taught at the University of California-Santa Barbara and at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also serves on the advisory board for National Public Radio’s “This American Life.”
Schedule and registration: Pre-registrants for the Midwest Qualitative Research Conference may check in beginning at noon Friday, April 20, in the atrium of Terrence Murphy Hall, 1000 LaSalle Ave. Sessions begin at 1:30 p.m.
Duneier’s presentation, “Visual Evidence in Ethnographic Studies: Updating the Stories of Sidewalk,” is the conference’s opening plenary session, at 4:30 p.m. in Thornton Auditorium of Terrence Murphy Hall.
The conference continues with sessions from 9 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Saturday, April 21.
Registration for the conference by Friday, March 30, is $130; after March 30, cost is $150.
For additional conference information and registration materials, visit the School of Education Web site and follow the links to the 13th annual Midwest Qualitative Research Conference, or call (651) 962-4550.
