Female

I have wide-ranging interests in sociology that include sociological theory, political sociology, social inequality, urban sociology, and sociology of education. Many of my publications are in the area of political sociology and collective behavior, starting with my 1966 Social Forces article with Mayer Zald, "Social Movement Organizations: Growth, Decay, and Change" and then moving on to Social Movements in America (1977), Contemporary Movements and Ideologies (1996), Social Movement Theory and Research: An Annotated Bibliographical Guide (1997), and "Transnational Movements in Postmodern Society" (Peace Review, 1994). With Larry Garner, I wrote an article about the issues facing the left in Italy-an analysis that proved accurate in the long run-- "Problems of the Hegemonic Party: The PCI and the Structural Limits of Reform" (Science and Society, 1981).

I teach a wide range of courses-my current favorite is Intro Statistics for the Social Sciences to which I bring "New Math" approaches from my teen years at Uni High in Urbana, Illinois. I also teach Sociological Theory; I emphasize visualization as a way to read difficult conceptual texts, and here you can see the collages that my students created to illustrate the "all that is solid melts into air" passage in the Communist Manifesto.

My work in political sociology is closely linked to my interest in sociological theory, and I am the editor of Social Theory: Continuity and Confrontation (2000), which Broadview Press is now publishing in a new two-volume edition. It presents key texts in theories of society from Machiavelli and the classical theorists to contemporary theorists such as Stuart Hall and Arjun Appadurai.