Seeing Others: A Conversation with Michèle Lamont

I recently sat down with Michèle Lamont, Mari Sanchez, and Shira Zilberstein to chat about Michèle’s new book and our respective studies on college students navigating COVID-19. You can find our recorded conversation, along with a lightly-edited transcript, on the Contexts blog.

Watch our conversation here.

Read more:

Michèle Lamont. 2023. Seeing Others: How Recognition Works—and How It Can Heal a Divided World. New York: Simon & Schuster.

Mari Sanchez, Michèle Lamont, and Shira Zilberstein. 2022. “How American College Students Understand Social Resilience and Navigate towards the Future during Covid and the Movement for Racial Justice,” Social Science & Medicine 301.

Elena G. van Stee. 2023. “Privileged Dependence, Precarious Autonomy: Parent/Young Adult Relationships through the Lens of COVID-19,” Journal of Marriage and Family 85(1).

Shira Zilberstein, Michèle Lamont, and Mari Sanchez. 2023. “Recreating a Plausible Future: Combining Cultural Repertoires in Unsettled Times,” Sociological Science 10.

Who’s the grown-up here?

I remember it vividly, like it was just yesterday.

I was a first-year PhD student in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. It was March 2020. Like many students, I had been traveling for spring break—then, like many (privileged) students, I ended up spending the rest of the spring 2020 semester sheltering in place in my childhood bedroom.

Read the rest on the Contexts blog.

Editor cap: On

I'm excited to join the Contexts editorial team as the magazine’s newest blog editor. 

The Contexts Blog takes many of the magazine’s best features to the next level—blog essays are timely, jargon-free, and ultra-concise. Your grandmother probably won’t make it through the methodological appendix of your book, but she might actually enjoy reading your Contexts blog post!

Check out my recent interview with co-editors Amin Ghaziani and Seth Abrutyn, then send me a pitch!