LARRY ISAAC
Ph.D. Indiana University, 1979
TITLE:   Distinguished Professor of Sociology
Affiliate Professor of American Studies
Research Fellow, Vanderbilt Center for Nashville Studies
Research Fellow, National Endowment for the Humanities, 2008
OFFICE:   319 Garland Hall
EMAIL:   larry.isaac@vanderbilt.edu
PHONE:   615-322-7534

HONORS, AWARDS, GRANTS RECEIVED

National Endowment for the Humanities Research Fellowship, 2008

Editorial Boards: American Sociological Review, American Journal of Sociology, Social Forces, Social Problems, Research in Political Sociology, Research in Social Stratification, Work and Occupations,current, Contemporary Sociology, current

Guest Editor, Historical Methods

Chair, Labor Studies Division, Society for the Study of Social Problems

Braverman Award Committee, Society for the Study of Social Problems

Barrington Moore Award (for "best recent publication"), Comparative-Historical Sociology Section, American Sociological Association (with Larry Griffin)

Executive Council, Comparative-Historical Section, American Sociological Association

Barrington Moore Award Committee, Comparative-Historical Section, American Sociological Association

Vice-President, Southern Sociological Society

Seven teaching awards (four at the university level), Florida State University

National Endowment for the Humanities Grant

Named: The Mildred and Claude Pepper Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Florida State University

President, Southern Sociological Society, 2007-2008

COURSES TAUGHT

UNDERGRADUATE:

  Introduction to Sociology
  Political Sociology
  American Social Movements
  American Worker in Film
  America in the Sixties
  Class, Race, and Gender in Gilded Age
      America

GRADUATE:

  Historical Sociology
  Social Movements


RESEARCH INTERESTS

Social Movements
Paramilitary Formations
Cultures of Class
Historical Methods
Labor Theory & History

CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECTS

Collective contention and cultural change: The making of the American Gilded Age labor problem novel

The militia movement, class formation, and state-building in Gilded Age America

Biography and history in the early Nashville civil rights movement (with Dan Cornfield, Dennis Dickerson, James Lawson, Jr.)

Striking deaths: Lethal contestation in the American labor movement, 1870-1970 (with Paul Lipold)

Narrative and pictorial characterizations of class in the Gilded Age

RECENT PUBLICATIONS

Larry Isaac. 2008. "Movement of Movements: Culture Moves in the Long Civil Rights Struggle" Social Forces 87 (September): forthcoming.

Larry Isaac. 2008. "Counter Frames and Allegories of Evil: Characterizations of Labor by Gilded Age Elites" Work and Occupations 35 (November): forthcoming.

Larry Isaac, Daniel Harrison, Paul Lipold. 2008. "Class Conflict in Capitalist Society: Foundations and Comparative-Historical Patterns." Encyclopedia of Violence, Peace, and Conflict edited by Lester Kurtz: forthcoming.

Larry Isaac, Steve McDonald, & Greg Lukasik. 2006. "Takin' It from the Streets: How the Sixties Mass Movement Revitalized Unionization." American Journal of Sociology. 112 (1): 46-96.

Larry Isaac & Daniel Harrison. 2006. "Corporate Warriors: The State and Changing Forms of Private Armed Force in America." Current Perspectives in Social Theory. Volume 24:149-184.

Larry Isaac & Lars Christiansen. 2002. "How the Civil Rights Movement Revitalized Labor Militancy." American Sociological Review 67(September):722-746.

Larry Isaac. 2002. "To Counter 'The Very Devil' and More: The Making of Independent Capitalist Militia in Gilded Age America." American Journal of Sociology 108(September):353-405.

Larry Isaac. 2002. "In Search of American Labor's Syndicalist Heritage." Labor Studies Journal 27(Summer):21-37.