Alison Bianchi and graduate student Donna Lancianese won the 2009 ASA Sociology of Emotions Section’s Recent Contribution Award for their paper “Accentuate the Positive: Positive Sentiments and Status in Task Groups” Social Psychology Quarterly 70: 7-26.

Kevin Leicht and Scott Fitzgerald (UI Ph.D., 2003) won the 2009 Midwest Sociological Society Best Book Award for their book, Post-Industrial Peasants: the Illusion of Middle Class Prosperity.

Michael Sauder's article (co-authored with Wendy Espeland), "Reactivity and Rankings: How Public Measures Recreate Social Worlds,” which was published in the American Journal of Sociology, has won the 2009 Clifford Geertz Prize for Best Article, awarded by ASA Section on the Sociology of Culture, and the Philip D. Shelton Prize for Outstanding Legal Education Research, awarded by the Law School Admission Council.