Sociology -- the systematic study of social life and social transformation -- is thriving at Yale.
In 1875, Yale professor William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) offered the first American course titled “Sociology.”
Today's department spans a wide array of areas and specialties, balanced with an emphasis on the core concepts, theory and methods of the discipline. Much is new since Sumner's day, but the Yale department still offers an overarching vision of the field, its future, and its relationship to knowledge of our changing world.
August 17th, 2010 The Department of Sociology intends to make a tenure-track assistant professor appointment beginning July 1, 2011. The department will consider all areas of the discipline, but has a preference for applications in the areas of race and ethnicity; urban sociology; urban ethnography; family; health; migration; poverty and inequality. Review of applications will begin September 15, 2010. For more information, please see http://www.yale.edu/sociology/jobs/.
May 27th, 2010 Zi Pan, a Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Sociology has been offered a tenure track Assistant Professor position at Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, School of Public Economics and Administration. Congratulations to Zi!
May 10th, 2010 David Apter, beloved professor emeritus at Yale, who wove his expertise in political science and sociology into influential treatises on the often-tortured birth of developing nations, died last Tuesday at his home in North Haven, Conn. He was 85.
Apter, an expert on democratization and political violence in Africa, Latin America and Asia, both conducted field research and taught at many of the world's top universities, including Yale, Princeton (where he earned his Ph.D.), Oxford, the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study and the Fondation des sciences politiques in Paris.
In his 46-year academic career, Professor Apter wrote or helped write more than 20 books that drew on social science and political theory and his own forays into impoverished lands, where he encountered peasants, politicians and sometimes terrorists.
Yale faculty remembered Apter as a deep thinker, a dear friend and a champion of interdisciplinary scholarship. “He was a tireless field worker, learning the fine grain of life out on the surfaces of the world where people actually live, and had a remarkable capacity to make broader theory out of it,” Kai T. Erikson, a former president of the American Sociological Association, said in an interview.
“It’s hard to pin him to the wall as a political scientist or a sociologist,” Professor Erikson said. “He had huge influence in both fields, bringing them together as an inventor of interdisciplinarity — almost the coiner of the term.”
Perhaps Professor Apter’s most influential work is “The Politics of Modernization” (University of Chicago, 1965), an analysis of the daunting development problems new nations face.
Apart from his extensive work in political science and sociology — he continued to publish books into the 1990s — Apter was also a skilled photographer. A 2007 exhibit of his work at the Whitney Humanities Center showed photographs taken as part of his research in Japan and China, as well as images of everyday life at his homes in Wallingford, Conn., and France.
Foster's wife, Karen, also a professor of near eastern languages and civilizations, added that Apter was an extraordinary person and friend.
"His wide-ranging intellectual curiosity, zest for life and genuine interest in other people made him a very special member of the Yale community," she said.
Read More: Yale Daily News, New York Times.
April 22nd, 2010 Ivan Szelenyi, William Graham Sumner Professor of Sociology, Professor of Political Science and former Chair of the Department, accepted an offer to become the Foundation Dean of Social Sciences at NYU Abu Dhabi. Professor Szelenyi will take up his new position at NYU Abu Dhabi on July 1, 2010. NYU Abu Dhabi is the first comprehensive liberal arts and science campus in the Middle East to be operated abroad by a major American research university.
March 27th, 2010 Richard Breen gave the 38th annual Geary lecture at the Economic and Social Research Institute, Dublin, Ireland on March 11th 2010. The Geary lecture series, http://www.esri.ie/publications/geary_lecture_series/, commemorates Roy Geary, the foremost Irish statistician of the 20th century. Previous Geary lecturers include Nobel laureates Gary Becker and Amartya Sen and sociologists Alvin Gouldner, Robert Merton and John Goldthorpe. The title of Breen’s talk was ‘Social Mobility and Equality of Opportunity’.
December 15, 2009 Julia Adams’ presidency of the Social Science History Association came to a close November 12-15, 2009, with the association's annual conference. This year's gathering, dedicated to the theme of "Agency and Action," was held on the Queen Mary, docked in Long Beach, California. For more on the conference, click here... Adams' presidential address, "1-800-How-Am-I-Driving? Agency in Social Science History," available, with images, in audio format, is forthcoming in extended form in the journal Social Science History. Next year's SSHA conference will be held November 18-21 at the Palmer House Hilton in Chicago.
November 29, 2009 Uli Mayer, Stanley B. Resor Professor and Chair of the Department, has been elected as the new President of the Leibniz Association, one of Germany's biggest research organizations. He will start his 4-year term on July 1 in 2010. The Leibniz Association plays a unique role in Germany’s research landscape, complementing the universities and the other research organizations. It comprises 90 research facilities with a total annual budget of more than 1.1 billion Euro. The 90 extramural research sites of the Leibniz Association conduct research ranging from astrophysics, plasma physics and marine biology to nutrition and diabetes, but also include institutes on contemporary history, economic research and the social sciences as well as major research museums. They also provide infrastructure and services for science and research like the German Primates Center and research-based services for the public, policy makers, academia and business. More than 14,000 people are currently employed at Leibniz research sites.
November 10, 2009 Jeffrey Alexander will give a lecture titled “Barack Obama Becomes a Hero: Performing the Democratic Struggle for Power in 2008,” at the Graduate School’s In the Company of Scholars Lecture series. The event will take place on Tuesday, November 17, at 4 p.m. in room 119 of the Hall of Graduate Studies. A reception will follow in the McDougal Center Common Room. Hosted by Jon Butler, Dean, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Poster.
October 30, 2009 Burton R. (Bob) Clark died yesterday after five months of illness. Bob Clark served as a Professor of Sociology at Yale for 14 years, beginning in 1966. While here, he was Director of Graduate Studies and Chair of the Department. He left in 1980 to become the Allan M. Cartter Professor of Higher Education at UCLA, where he had received one of the first Ph.D.s ever awarded by the UCLA Department of Sociology. Bob wrote many books about higher education and in 2008 the Johns Hopkins Press brought out a collection of his selected writings from 1956 through 2006. Bob was a dear friend to his former colleagues and will be missed. Adele Clark, his wife of many years, survives him. Burton Clark Bio.
August 10, 2009 The American Sociological Association featured research by Natalie Nitsche and Hannah Brückner in a press release announcing their paper, Opting out of the family? Social Change in Racial Inequality in Family Formation Patterns and Marriage Outcomes among Highly Educated Women. The paper was presented at the annual meeting of the ASA in San Francisco, CA, August 8th 2009.
