Distinguished Lecturers
Each year, Alpha Kappa Delta holds a Distinguished Lecture session at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.
Dr. Aldon D. Morris
“Erasure and Triumph of a Renowned Scholar Activist: The Saga of W.E.B. Du Bois”
Dr. Morris’ lecture addressed the profound importance of the scholarship and activism of W. E. B. Du Bois. Du Bois was a pivotal scholar of modernity who analyzed the role white supremacy played in shaping the modern world. Slavery and colonialism were key tools western Europe employed in the domination of people of color across the world during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Du Bois revealed how these forms of domination generated modern capitalism and the formation of vast empires in western Europe and the United States. This domination relied on brutal violence and hyper exploitation in conquering arker people of the world. Yet these dominated populations possessed agency which they utilized to liberate themselves. Because of racism, his radical ideas, and his prodigious activism, Du Bois’s scholarship was largely erased from sociology and the social sciences. We are witnessing a resurrection of Du Bois’s scholarship needed to illuminate the modern world. In this moment, a Du Boisian sociology is rapidly evolving and thriving. In this sense, Du Bois’s contributions are triumphing because his truths crushed to earth are rising again.
Alpha Kappa Delta Distinguished Lecturers throughout the years:
2026 – Dr. Aldon D. Morris Northeastern University
“Erasure and Triumph of a Renowned Scholar Activist: The Saga of W.E.B. Du Bois”
2025 – Dr. Mary Romero, Arizona State University
“Reimagining Domestic Work Through an Intersectional Lens”
2024 – Dr. Jennifer Sherman, Washington State University
“Dividing Paradise: Inequality and Class Blindness in Rural America”
2023 – Dr. C.J. Pascoe, University of Oregon
“Nice is Not Enough: How A Regime of Kindness Won’t Solve Inequality“
2022 – Dr. David Embrick, University of Connecticut
“White Sanctuaries: Considering HWCUs and their Role in Maintaining the Status Quo”
2020 & 2021 – No Distinguished Lecture due to COVID-19 pandemic
2019 – Dr. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, Duke University
“Feeling Race, Feeling Trump: Racialized Emotions in Trump’s America”
2018 – Dr. Kathleen Gerson, New York University
“Different Ways of Not Having It All: Fashioning Strategies of Gender, Work, and Care in an Age of Insecurity”
2017 – Dr. Barbara Risman, University of Illinois at Chicago
“Where Will the Millennials Take Us? Transforming the Gender Structure”
2016 – Dr. Annette Lareau, University of Pennsylvania
“Unequal Childhoods, Unequal Adulthoods: Small Moments and Large Consequences”
2015 – Dr. Brian Powell, Indiana University
“Changing Counts, Counting Change: Toward a More Inclusive Definition of Family”
2014 – Dr. Cecilia Ridgeway, Stanford University
“How Does Gender Inequality Persist in the Modern World?”
2013 – Dr. Teresa Sullivan, University of Virginia
“Greedy Institutions”
2012 – Dr. David Takeuchi, University of Washington
“Bringing Boundaries to Reach Real Utopias”
2011 – Dr. Frances Fox Piven, CUNY Graduate Center
“The Resurgence of Corporate Power in the United States and the Implications for Democracy as We Know It”
2010 – Dr. Michael Messner, University of South California
“Stopping Gender Violence: Two Generations of Male Activists”
2009 – Dr. Cecilia Menjivar, Arizona State University
“Immigration, Citizenship, and Exclusion: Latin-American Immigrants and the Contemporary Regime”