Tompkins Cortland Community College – located in the lovely Finger Lakes area of New York State, halfway between Ithaca and Cortland – will host the 58th Annual Meeting of the New York State Sociological Association (NYSSA) on October 1-2, 2010.

The Conference is titled Taking it Big, in honor of a phrase used by C. Wright Mills to capture the aim of social science inquiry and the promise of the sociological imagination.  The products of taking it big are, in Mills’s words, a form of sociological poetry:  “a style of experience and expression that reports social facts and at the same time reveals their human meanings.” This conference will offer a forum for a full range of inquiry designed to take it big, from auto-ethnographic studies to conceptual and empirical analyses of development, globalization, war, and natural disasters. Philip McMichael from the Department of Development Sociology at Cornell University will offer the keynote address Friday evening, titled “Rethinking Global Ecology for the 21^st Century.”  Herb Haines from the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at SUNY Cortland will offer the lunch address Saturday, titled “Bridges to Somewhere: The Power of Unexpected Alliances in Social Movements.”

Important Note: This conference is being held the same weekend as Ithaca College’s Homecoming.  Those of you who wish to stay in Ithaca should make accommodation arrangements as soon as possible.