Jeffrey Alexander

Bio

Jeffrey C. Alexander is the Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology at Yale University. With Ron Eyerman, Philip Smith, and Frederick Wherry, he is Co-Director of the Center for Cultural Sociology (CCS). Jeffrey Alexander works in the areas of theory, culture, and politics. An exponent of the “strong program” in cultural sociology, he has investigated the cultural codes and narratives that inform diverse areas of social life.

Jeffrey Alexander CV

Areas of Interest

Culture, Politics, Theory

Books

• The Crisis of Journalism Reconsidered: Cultural Power (edited with Elizabeth Butler Breese and Maria Luengo), Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2015
• Obama Power (with Bernadette Jaworsky), Polity Press, 2014.
• The Dark Side of Modernity Polity Press, 2013.
• The Oxford Handbook of Cultural Sociology (edited with Philip Smith and Ronald Jacobs), Oxford University Press, 2012.
• Trauma: A Social Theory Polity Press, 2012.
• Iconic Power: Materiality and Meaning in Social Life (edited with Dominik Bartmanski and Bernhard Giesen), Palgrave Macmillan, 2012.
• Performative Revolution in Egypt: An Essay in Cultural Power Bloomsbury Academic, 2011. Department Link>
• Performance and Power Polity Press, 2011.
• Interpreting Clifford Geertz: Cultural Investigations in the Social Sciences (edited with Philip Smith and Matthew Norton), Palgrave Macmillan, 2011.
• Narrating Trauma: On the Impact of Collective Suffering (edited with Ron Eyerman and Elizabeth Breese), Paradigm Publishers, 2011.
• The Performance of Politics: Obama’s Victory and the Democratic Struggle for Power Oxford University Press, 2010.
• A Contemporary Introduction to Sociology: Culture and Society in Transition (with Kenneth Thompson). Paradigm Publishers, 2008. (Second Edition, with Kenneth Thompson and Laura Edles, 2011)
• Remembering the Holocaust: A Debate (editor) Oxford University Press, 2009.
• Meaning and Method: The Cultural Approach to Sociology (edited with Isaac Reed), Paradigm Publishers, 2008
• Culture, Society, and Democracy (edited with Isaac Reed). Paradigm Publishers, 2007.
• The Civil Sphere Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Social Performance: Symbolic Action, Cultural Pragmatics and Ritual (edited with Bernhard Giesen and Jason Mast). Cambridge University Press, 2006.
• The Cambridge Companion to Durkheim (edited with Philip Smith). Cambridge University Press, 2005.
• Cultural Trauma and Collective Identity (with Eyerman, Giesen, Smelser, and Sztompka). University of California Press, 2004.
• The Meanings of Social Life: A Cultural Sociology Oxford University Press, 2003.

Recent Articles

JEFFREY ALEXANDER | PUBLISHED ARTICLES

2016

• Performance and Politics: President Obama’s Dramatic Re-Election in 2012. The Drama Review, 60/4, Winter 2016.
• Dramatic Intellectuals. International Journal of Politics, Culture and Society. 29. (Portuguese translation, Teoria e cultura, 2017)
• Progress and disillusion: Civil repair and its discontents. Thesis Eleven, 137(1).
• Culture trauma, morality and solidarity: The social construction of ‘Holocaust’ and other mass murders. Thesis Eleven, 132(1). (Chinese translation, forthcoming; Spanish translation, 2016).
• Obama’s final State of the Union: Scholars React. The Conversation, January 13, 2016. (Norwegian translation, 2016)

2015

• Measuring, counting, interpreting: Our debate on methods continues. American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 3(3).
• Afterword: The Strong Program and the Iconic Turn. Sociologica, Società editrice il Mulino, Bologna 1/15.
• Introduction to the Special Section on “The Crisis of Journalism Reconsidered: Cultural Power”. Fudan Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences, 8(1).
• Interview with Jeffrey Alexander. (in Portuguese) Revista Estudos Politicos, Alexandre Werneck, Antonio Brasil Jr., Cristina Buarque e Marcelo de Oliveira, 5(2).

Courses and Seminars

Undergraduate

• HUMS 335 01 / SOCY 202 01, Cultural Sociology
• SOCY 330, Civil Society and Democracy.
• SOCY 352, Material Culture.

Graduate

• SOCY 525, Cultural Sociology: Theory and Research Programs.
• SOCY 534 01, Cultural Sociology
• SOCY 562 01, Topics in Cultural Sociology
• SOCY 565 01, Advanced Seminar in Cultural Sociology
• SOCY 567, Cultural Performances. The Whitney Seminar on New Perspectives in the Social Sciences and Humanities.
• SOCY 620 01, Iconic Material Culture
• SOCY 628, Workshop in Cultural Sociology.

Education

Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1978
B.A. Harvard College, 1969