The theme for the 2025 annual conference for the Association for Applied and Clinical Sociology (AACS) was “Scholar-Activism: All Around Us and Within.” This is a written version of the Presidential Address that then AACS President, Dr. Lindy Hern, delivered at the conference. In it, Hern discusses her own pathway to scholar activism through a reflection on her own herstory, her own research, and her own work with activists. The analysis presented in this essay connects to larger ongoing societal issues such as the rising authoritarianism in the United States and what scholar-activists can do about this problematic development.
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HernLindy. 2012. “Everybody in and Nobody out: Opportunities, Narrative, and the Radical Flank in the Movement for Single-payer Health Care Reform.” PhD dissertation, Department of Sociology, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO (https://mospace.umsystem.edu/items/c19da150-0f77-48a3-8177-47d5c7b3899b).
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HernLindy. 2016. “Navigating the Borderland of Scholar Activism: Narrative Practice as Applied Sociology in the Movement for Single Payer Health Care Reform.” Journal of Applied Social Science10(2):119–31.
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HernLindy. 2019. “Resisting “Politics as Usual”: Examining the Rise of Anti-establishment Politics by Comparing the Narratives of Opportunity Used within the Single Payer Movement during Two Presidential Eras.” Historical Sociology32(3):360–77.
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HernLindy. 2020. Single Payer Healthcare Reform: Grassroots Mobilization and the Turn against Establishment Politics in the Medicare for All Movement. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
KraxbergerA. M.PrakkenB. P.2025. “Affective Shifts in Political Comedy: The Move to Seriousness in Late Night Television.” Comedy Studies 1–19. Published electronically June 2. doi:10.1080/2040610X.2025.2512676.
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PollettaFrancesca. 2006. It Was Like a Fever: Storytelling in Protest and Politics. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
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SnyderTimothy. 2017. On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century. New York: Crown.
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YoungDannagalMaloneyErin K.BleakleyAmyLangbaumJessica. 2022. “I Feel It in My Gut: Epistemic Motivations, Political Beliefs, and Misperceptions of COVID-19 and the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election.” Journal of Social and Political Psychology10(2):643–56.
