Department of Sociology
University of British Columbia
Office: AnSo 3125
Phone: (604) 827-5511
Fax: (604) 822-6161
Email: ngross(at)interchange.ubc.ca
Neil Gross taught at the University of Southern California and Harvard University before joining the UBC faculty in 2008 as Associate Professor of Sociology. Trained at the University of Wisconsin-Madison (Ph.D., 2002), Gross has special interests in sociological theory, politics, the sociology of ideas and academic life, and the sociology of culture.
He is the editor of Sociological Theory, a quarterly journal of the American Sociological Association.
Gross’s first book, Richard Rorty: The Making of an American Philosopher (University of Chicago Press, 2008), received numerous reviews in the popular press -- in the Economist, the American Prospect, the San Francisco Chronicle, n+1, the New York Observer, the Times Higher Education Supplement (UK), Frankfurter Allgemeine (Germany), NRC Boeken (The Netherlands), Library Journal, Choice, and Publishers Weekly. So far academic reviews have appeared in Contemporary Sociology, Canadian Journal of Sociology, Critical Sociology, Revue francaise de science politique, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews, Krisis, Metapsychology, International Journal of Philosophical Studies, and the Journal of American History. The book is to be the subject of a symposium in the Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society. A Spanish-language edition is in progress.
Gross is co-editor and co-translator of Durkheim’s Philosophy Lectures: Notes from the Lycée de Sens Course, 1883-4 (Cambridge University Press, 2004).
Gross’s research has been profiled in the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and other newspapers and magazines.
WORKING PAPER: "Why Are Professors Liberal?"
Among Gross’s articles and book chapters are:
2009. “A Pragmatist Theory of Social Mechanisms.” American Sociological Review 74:358-79.
2009. “The Religiosity of American College and University Professors” (with Solon Simmons.) Sociology of Religion 70:101-129.
2007. “Pragmatism and Phenomenology in 20th-Century American Sociology.” In Sociology in America: A History, Craig Calhoun, ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
2005. “A General Theory of Scientific/Intellectual Movements” (with Scott Frickel.) American Sociological Review 70:204-232.
2005. “The Detraditionalization of Intimacy Reconsidered.” Sociological Theory 23:286-311.
2003. “Richard Rorty’s Pragmatism: A Case Study in the Sociology of Ideas.” Theory & Society 32:93-148.
2002. “Becoming a Pragmatist Philosopher: Status, Self-Concept, and Intellectual Choice.” American Sociological Review 67:52-76.
2002. “Intimacy as a Double-Edged Phenomenon? An Empirical Test of Giddens” (with Solon Simmons.) Social Forces 81:531-55.
2001. “The New Sociology of Ideas” (with Charles Camic.) In The Blackwell Companion to Sociology, Judith Blau, ed. Oxford: Blackwell.
1998. “Contemporary Developments in Sociological Theory: Current Projects and Conditions of Possibility” (with Charles Camic.) Annual Review of Sociology 24:453-476.