going greek

My advisee Matt Supple, Director of Fraternity and Sorority Life here at Maryland, is quoted in this article!

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/22/education/edlife/prepping-students-for-sorority-rush.html?src=me&ref=general

“Practice, practice, practice in the mirror, saying your name, and see what you look like when you listen,” advises Denise Pietzsch, an etiquette consultant in Ohio who works discreetly with clients heading to Miami University. “If you’re a great active listener, they will remember you because you let them talk.” Her typical fee: $125 an hour.

Ms. von Sperling offers a Friday-to-Sunday intensive, for $8,000. 

[wow]

[i have an upcoming article on greek life and $/cultural capital, a follow-up to the one on diversity, or lack thereof]

race-authenticity-identity-just-feed-me

http://www.theatlanticcities.com/arts-and-lifestyle/2012/07/radical-rise-asian-soul-food/2595/

Syhabout’s praise brings to mind a comment Choi made about the inspiration behind his rice bowl restaurant Chego: It was about never again having to hide his Asian self. As a kid, when friends came over and opened his family’s fridge door, he recalled, “There’s fish guts, you know, pickled daikon, braised mackerel and gingko nuts. You can’t show that life a lot. A lot of times you get the stink eye, like. ‘What the f you got in your refrigerator dude?’ Even to the toughest dude, that’s a very sensitive moment, and so you hide a lot of that stuff. Well, Chego was a poem to that. It was like, ‘Let me show you what’s really in my refrigerator.’”

encyclopedia brown, boy detective

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/07/16/donald-sobol-dead-encyclopedia-brown_n_1676665.html

awkward black girl

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/arts/television/issa-rae-and-awkward-black-girl-are-breaking-ground.html?_r=1

income inequality + marriage

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/15/us/two-classes-in-america-divided-by-i-do.html?src=me&ref=general

There are some nuances this article misses (and others that it gets), still, the big picture is sobering:

But for inequality more broadly, Mr. Western found that the growth in single parenthood in recent decades accounted for 15 percent to 25 percent of the widening income gaps. (Estimates depend on the time period, the income tiers and the definition of inequality.) Gary Burtless of the Brookings Institution found it to account for 21 percent. Robert Lerman of the Urban Institute, comparing lower-middle- and upper-middle-income families, found that single parenthood explained about 40 percent of inequality’s growth. “That’s not peanuts,” he said. . . . 

Forty years ago, the top and middle income thirds had virtually identical family patterns: more than 95 percent of households with children in either tier had two parents in the home. Since then the groups have diverged, according to Mr. Western and Ms. Shollenberger: 88 percent at the top have two parents, but just 71 percent do in the middle.

“Things remained extremely stable in the top third,” Mr. Western said. “The middle is increasingly suffering some of the same disadvantages as the bottom.”

 

superhero studies

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/14/business/media/even-at-comic-con-you-cant-defy-gravitas.html?_r=1&hp

The issue for the conventioneers was that after struggling since the 1970s to have the comics taken seriously, they have now succeeded, perhaps too well. The geek culture has been around long enough to create a tenured intellectual elite, and, by and large, these professionals see nothing but trouble in the fantasy world.

[cue: dramatic music]

race by phone

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cassandra-jackson/passing-on-the-phone_b_1651161.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

(swiped from ryon j. cobb, abd) 

it takes a village (or an ethnic economy)

Almost 6 years to turn a graduate school paper into a publication = A really long time

Getting to mention karaoke in AERJ = Priceless

My article comparing SAT prep in Korean American/Chinese American communities is finally out.  This paper will always hold a special place in my heart, not just because of the lengthy time that has passed since Draft 1 in 2006, but because it’s somewhat of a love letter (if you can call logistic regression a love letter) to the communities that have nurtured/fed me over the years, from immigrant congregations in Ohio to the bounty of KTown/The 626.  There’s a lot of messiness that happens in ethnic communities, but there’s also something special about the infrastructure that promotes togetherness in a society that’s increasingly bowling alone.

Park, J.J. (2012). It takes a village (or an ethnic economy): The varying roles of socioeconomic status, religion, and social capital in SAT Preparation for Chinese and Korean American students. American Educational Research Journal, 49(4), 624-650.

please someone call the girl scout

Fresh off the Street.

 

 

(credit–justin fung, who plays his own pretty good n’ angsty version of callmemaybe)

(post-ucla gse&is, dean dorr will be the new provost of the uc. a very respectable gig, but i still think the most impressive part of her vitae is the stint she did as a consultant on the original sesame street.)

grace meng

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/nyregion/grace-meng-is-rising-star-for-asian-new-yorkers.html?_r=1&smid=fb-share