Jeffrey Alexander

Lillian Chavenson Saden Professor of Sociology 

Jeff Alexander, B.A. Harvard University, Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley, faculty member at Yale since 2001, after a long career at the University of California, Los Angeles: You are a strikingly innovative social theorist, a founder of the “strong program” in cultural sociology. You and your students have shown how cultural meaning permeates every dimension of social life, from politics and race, to gender relations, class conflict, and democracy. 

An extraordinarily prolific and original scholar, whose work has been characterized as an “intellectual tour de force,” you have authored or co-authored twenty-two books, edited or coedited nearly two score more, and written dozens of articles. In these works, —many of them translated into other languages—you consider, investigate, hypothesize, analyze, theorize about, and interpret what you call the “drama of social life,” the patterns of meaning in the societal events that shape our lives. By stages, your work has used theories of drama, performance, and the iconic to demonstrate the effects of culture on society. Your ongoing project on the civil sphere – the culture codes that hold a democratic society together – has found a world-wide audience. 

When you came to Yale at the start of a new century, you became the founder and co-director of the Center for Cultural Sociology, now over two decades old, where faculty and graduate student scholars gather weekly to present and debate their work. Your presence has transformed Yale into a global center for cultural sociology and has drawn graduate students from six continents. A generous colleague, you chaired your department from 2002 to 2005 and served on numerous tenure committees and executive committees. 

Your many awards include the Clifford Geertz Award for Best Article in Cultural Sociology; the Mary Douglas Prize for Best Book in the Sociology of Culture; the Theory Prize from the Theory Section of the American Sociological Association for best theoretical article; and The Foundation Mattei Dogan Prize in Sociology by the International Sociological Association, presented every four years in recognition of lifetime accomplishments to “a scholar of very high standing in the profession and of outstanding international reputation.” 

Your guest professorships and appointments have spanned the globe, including the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford; the Swedish Collegium for Advanced Study in the Social Sciences, Sweden; the Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton; the University of Bordeaux; the École des Hautes Études des Sciences Politiques; the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales; Nankai University; Hebrew University; and Konstanz University. 

As a cultural sociologist, it is unsurprising that you are deeply engaged in the culture around you, living right in the heart of Yale and New Haven, and, with your wife Morel, a practicing artist and psychotherapist, immersing yourself in your community. As you retire from teaching but certainly not from continuing to theorize, speak, and write, Yale thanks you for coming across the country at the start of the new millennium to invigorate our own Yale culture.