USC Department of Sociology

The Department of Sociology regularly holds colloquia and other meetings with sociologists from around the country. The next lecture for this coming academic year will be announced soon.

Each year, the Department organizes the Bruce H. Mayhew Jr. Memorial Lecture. This lecture series began in 1988 in memory of Dr. Bruce Mayhew, one of the Department's most celebrated members, who died of cancer in March of that year.

This year's speaker of the Mayhew Lecture is Dr. Edward A. Tiryakian, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Duke University. Dr. Tiryakian has published widely in areas related to sociological theory and the history of social thought, religion, globalization, ethnicity and national identity, war, and disasters. His talk is entitled "Cartoons Are No Laughing Matter: A Durkheimian Perspective". The lecture will be held on April 3 at 3:30 pm in the Gressette room of Harper College on the horseshoe. Click here for more info and pictures of Dr. Tiryakian's talk!

Patrick Nolan is Professor and past Chair of the USC Department of Sociology. Attracted to, and inspired by, Bruce Mayhew's model of independent scholarship and research as a graduate student at Temple University (Ph.D. 1978), he has investigated and commented on a wide range of social phenomena. On March 29, he will talk about "Phantasmagorical? Reflections on Bruce Mayhew and Structural Sociology," Carolina Room at the Inn, 1619 Pendleton, at 4:00 pm. Click here for a video of Dr. Nolan's presentation.

Kathleen Carley is a Professor in the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University and the Director of the center for Computational Analysis of Social and Organizational Systems. She does research that combines cognitive science, dynamic social networks, text processing, organizations, and social and computer science in a variety of theoretical and applied venues. On April 7, she will talk about "Beyond Social Networks: A Dynamic Network Analysis Approach Applied to Counter Terrorism," Gresette room, Harper College, at 1:30 pm.

Noah Mark, Stanford University, conducts theoretical research on social evolution. He seeks to understand how observable social structures and cultural patterns could have emerged through interrelated micro-level and macro-level social processes. He is particularly interested in the origins of inequality, social differentiation, and cultural heterogeneity.

James D. Wright, University of Central Florida, is the Provost Distinguished Research Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology. Dr. Wright has published seventeen books on topics ranging from guns to poverty to drugs to natural disasters to American Politics to research Methods to the NASCAR Winston Cup. In addition, he is the author or co-author of more than 250 journal articles, book chapters, essays, reviews, and polemics. His current research interests include the "divorce reform" movement, health aspects of homelessness, urban poverty and inequality, and violence. He has served as editor-in-chief of the journal Social Science Research since 1978.

Richard Della Fave, North Carolina State University, gave a talk in our Department on the continued relevance of Marx. Professor Della Fave is currently working on a book length manuscript, The Third Reconstruction?; an article on religious denominationalism; articles on the significance of a wave of fires at African-American churches; and he is preparing a new graduate course on Varieties of Marxian Theory.

Edward J. Lawler, Cornell University, is a sociologist and dean of the Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He presented a new theory on "network exchange theory," the study of how and why people use power when bargaining, at the 12th-annual Bruce H. Mayhew Jr. Memorial Lecture, April 12, 2002. Lawler’s talk, "Exchange Networks and Group Formation," focused on how and why people transition from a position of self-interest to one of perceived collective interest in bargaining relationships. Lawler contends that, over time, buyers and sellers in a relationship of exchange—employee/employer or consumer/shop owner, for example—will become more cooperative, begin to trust one another, and be less exploitative when given the chance (See: USC Times).

Andrew Abbott, University of Chicago, spoke about “Linked Ecologies”. Andrew Abbott has interests in professions and work, urban sociology, historical sociology, methodology, and general social theory. His current projects include a book on the intellectual trajectories of students in college and a book on general social theory in the pragmatist Chicago tradition. He continues to develop methods for analysis of sequence data. He is starting a project on life course and emotion. Abbott is editor of the American Journal of Sociology.

Erik Olin Wright, University of Wisconsin, spoke about “Class, Exploitation, and the Shmoo.” Professor Wright is Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin - Madison. Among his various honors at Wisconsin, he has received the Romnes Fellowship, the C. Wright Mills Distinguished Professor Award, the John D. MacArthur Professorship, the Vilas Distinguished Research Professorship, and the University of Wisconsin Distinguished Teaching Award. Dr. Wright came to Wisconsin from the University of California - Berkeley, where he received his Ph.D. (Sociology, 1976). He has also been trained in History at Oxford, Social Studies at Harvard, and Unitarian Universalism at Starr King School for the Ministry.

Michael W. Macy, Cornell University, spoke on “On-Line Anarchy: A Test of Network Distributed Social Control.” Why does our world not degenerate into the world of Mad Max? And why does it sometimes seem as if it may? Social order among interdependent agents can be imposed "from above" by a global policing mechanism or it can emerge "from below" through local interactions among adaptive agents with no centralized coordination. Professor Macy's research explores the latter: the emergence of mutually beneficial norms and conventions in a self-organizing social system. Professor Macy uses computer simulation (including neural nets and genetic algorithms) and laboratory experiments with human subjects to look for elementary principles of organization that may yield clues about possible answers.

Nan Lin is Professor of Sociology at Duke University. His main research interests are social networks and social capital, the life stress process (especially social support as resources), social stratification and mobility, and Chinese societies. He spoke on "A Social Exchange and Economic Exchange: Two Types of Rationality," February 19, 1998.

Dr. Lynn Smith-Lovin is presently Professor of Sociology at Duke University. She studies identity, action and emotional response and is interested in the basic question of how identities affect social interaction. She uses experimental, observational, survey and simulation methods to describe how identities, actions and emotions are interrelated. The experiments usually involve creating social situations where unusual things happen to people, then seeing how they respond behaviorally or emotionally. She observes small task group interactions to see how identities influence conversational behavior. Her survey work often focuses on gender and other social positions that influence the groups and networks in which people are imbedded. Simulations studies involve affect control theory, a mathematical model of how identities, actions and emotions affect one another.

Dr. Freeman is Research Professor in the Department of Sociology and Institute for Mathematical Behavioral Sciences, School of Social Sciences, University of California, Irvine. He works as a social network analyst and studies the structural form --or patterning-- of the ties that link social actors. This work sometimes involves observing and collecting empirical data. And sometimes it depends on developing formal models or applying existing models to data that are already available. His overall goal in all of this work is to learn something basic about the foundations and consequences of the sociability of social animals.

Dr. Victor Nee is Goldwin Smith Professor and Director of the Center for the Study of Economy and Society at Cornell University. His current interests are focused on studies in economic sociology, new institutional analysis, stratification/inequality, and immigration/race. In economic sociology, he is working on a multi-year study of the emergence of market economy and institutional change in China; a theory of innovation; a cross-national study of bureaucracy and development of financial markets. On institutional analysis, Nee is interested in deepening his work on understanding the relationship between formal and informal processes in institutional settings.

Dr. McPherson is Professor of Sociology at the University of Arizona and at Duke. Most of his research focuses on voluntary groups and the social networks that draw people into and out of them. But his research agenda is more ambitious than that. The general ecological theory of affiliation that he developed shows how any social entity that spreads through networks behaves. The theory has been applied to occupations, musical tastes, religious congregations, voluntary organizations and other social groups. He also works on applying it to fuzzier cultural entities like attitudes, beliefs and social identities.

Professor Randall Collins is presently the Dorothy Swaine Thomas Professor in Sociology at the University of Pennsylvania. His research interests include sociological theory, macro-historical sociology of political and economic change, micro-sociology and face-to-face Interaction, the sociology of Intellectuals, and social conflict, especially violent conflict.

Dr. Turner is Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Riverside. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, UC Riverside Faculty Research Lecturer, and won the 2002 Distinguished Teaching Award from the Pacific Sociological Association. He is a general theorist on all social processes, from micro-level face-to-face interactions to population-level processes. He also conducts applied research on inequality, race, and ethnicity.

Peter Blau was among the strongest and most influential proponents of sociological structuralism in modern sociology. Born in Vienna, Austria, he emigrated to the United States in 1939, where he received his PhD at Columbia University in 1952. He taught at the University of Chicago, Columbia University, and the University of North Carolina. He made many novel contributions in sociology, including work on organizations and bureaucracy, upward mobility and occupational opportunities, and the influence of population structures on human behavior. In 1974 Blau was President of the American Sociological Association.

Mamadi Corra, East Carolina University, “Shadow of the Future? African-American Students in Advanced High School Courses.” Tuesday, February 26, 2008, 3:30 p.m.

Roberto Franzosi, Emory University, "The Rise of Italian Fascism (1919-1922): Narrative as Data." Friday, January 25, Room 315 Sloan, 3:00 pm.

Kjell Törnblom, University of Skövde, Sweden, "Toward a Resource Production Theory of Justice Conceptions", Wednesday, April 25, 2007.

Yen-Sheng Chiang, Department of Sociology, University of Washington, "Can partner selection promote the prevalence of prosociality?," Monday, March 19, 2007.

Henry A. Walker, Professor of Sociology, University of Arizona, “Legitimizing Mediocrity: The Social Economy of Higher Education,” March 17, 2006.

James Witte, Professor and Survey Lab Director, Department of Sociology, Clemson University, “A Decade of Web-Based Survey Research: Problems, Potential and Promise,” March 14, 2006.

Rosemary Hopcroft, Department of Sociology, University of North Caroline-Charlotte, “The Sex Difference in Depression Across 29 Countries,” February 17, 2006.

Scott Fitzgerald, Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, “Pulpits and the Platforms: The Role of the Church in Determining Protest Among Black Americans,” September 30, 2005.

Kimmo Eriksson, Department of Mathematics and Physics, Mälardalen University, Sweden, “Stereotype Threat, Math Performance, and Gender Identification in Sweden,” September 23, 2005.

Brian Powell, Allen D. and Polly S. Grimshaw Professor of Sociology, Indiana University, “Kin or Sin? Contested Constructions of the American Family,” March 18, 2005.

Yang Cao, Ph.D., Department of Sociology, UNC-Charlotte, “Why Do People Change Jobs? Employment Mobility and Gender Stratification in Urban China,” Friday, September 10, 2004, Sloan College, Room 315, 3:00 – 4:00 p.m.

Dawn Robinson, University of Iowa, spoke about her research in affect-control theory.

Elena Vesselinov, University at Albany, SUNY, spoke about her work on housing inequality in Sofia, Bulgaria.

Molly Martin, University of Madison-Wisconsin, spoke about her work on "Interactions in the Intergenerational Associations of Familial and Socioeconomic Characteristics."

Beth Rubin, University of North Carolina, Charlotte, gave a presentation in our department about her work on organizations.

Eszter Hargittai, Princeton University, spoke about "How Wide a Web? Social Inequality in the Digital Age."

Kathryn Harker, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, gave a talk on "Family Structure Pathways and the Academic Outcomes of Adolescent Stepchildren.”

John MacDonald and Angela Gover, University of South Carolina Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, gave a talk on “Youth on Youth Homicide: Assessing the Structural Covariates of U.S. Cities Across Time.”

Henry A. Walker, University of Arizona, spoke about “Double Standards? Stable Expectations? Persistent Inequality!”.

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