Georgia State University sociology faculty and Ph.D. alumni have co-edited a special edition of the Journal of Urban Affairs, featuring Atlanta prominently in an examination of the “Black Mecca” and the future of these cities/regions.
The print edition will be released Aug. 1, and all articles are downloadable for free for the next month. It is Vol. 44, No. 6 and available through Taylor & Francis at https://www.tandfonline.com/toc/ujua20/44/6?nav=tocList.
Professor Deirdre Oakley of the Department of Sociology, and Georgia State sociology alum Jonathan Grant, Assistant Professor of Sociology and Africana Studies at University of North Florida, co-edited the edition, and several of the co-authors in this edition are either alumni of the program or are currently in the Ph.D. program.
They include:
- Barbara Combs (Ph.D. ’08), now chair of the sociology and criminal justice program at Clark Atlanta University.
- Tyler Gay, a current Ph.D. student at Georgia State and is a Robert Wood Johnson Health Policy Research Scholar, currently undertaking a yearlong fellowship at Atlanta’s Southern Center for Civil and Human Rights.
- Ifeanyi Ukpabi (Ph.D. ’22), who will become a postdoctoral fellow at the Community Innovation and Action Center, University of Missouri-St Louis. In this role, he will play a leading role in the St. Louis Metro area Anchor Action Network conducting a focused geographical study and intervention on several poverty-stricken Black neighborhoods in the metro region that will be bring employment and wealth building to these marginalized neighborhoods.
Articles in this special edition, Black Mecca Dilemmas: Prosperity, Political Power, and Poverty, relate to the framework of the concept of the Black Mecca, broadly characterized as a city or place with a dominant Black constituency that is influential in the local social, cultural, economic and political realms. The scholars seek to gain a more comprehensive understanding of these spaces, what they have been in the past, and what may be in their future – particularly focusing on Black Meccas in the southern United States such as Atlanta.
The Journal of Urban Affairs, one of the most prominent peer review urban studies journals, is a publication of the Urban Affairs Association (UAA). The UAA is an international professional organization for urban scholars, researchers and public service professionals; the Andrew Young School of Policy Studies is an institutional member of the organization.
— Jeremy Craig, Communications Manager for the Office of the Provost