Past Papers

Spring 2024

Apr 4:	Sam Friedman, “‘But Switzerland’s Boring’: Snobbery, Stigma and Why the Wealthy Say No To Tax Migration”
Apr 25:	Emilie Connolly, “A Fiduciary Empire Divided”
May 16:	Benjamin Shestakofsky, “Patient Capital, Impatient Organizations: Producing ‘Hypergrowth’ Inside a Tech Startup”
May 23:	Benjamin Bradlow, “The ‘Power To Pollute’ and ‘Post-neoliberal’ Climate Finance” (with Aishwarya Swamidurai)
Jun 6:	Andrew B. Liu, “Lively Accumulation: Zhao Ziyang, the 1980 Readjustment and Histories Of Capitalist And Socialist Crises”

Winter 2024

Feb 8:	George Steinmetz, “Durkheim, (anti)colonialism, (anti)imperialism, and postcolonial theory”
Feb 22:	Gershon Shafir, “Privilege versus Right: Jewish Vigilantism against Israel’s Palestinian Citizens”
Feb 29:	Chris Herring, “Weaponizing Shelter” (from Cruel Streets: Policing and Punishing the Unhoused in the American City, under contract with University of California Press)
Mar 6:	Erez Maggor, “The New Industrial Policy and the Political Economy of Conditionality”
Mar 14:	Sandy Xu, “On the Indispensability of the Disability Category for Modern State Administration”

Fall 2023

Oct 5:	Alexander Ferrer, “Los Angeles as Rent Plantation: A Racial Geography of Owners and Tenants”
Oct 12:	Luis Flores Jr.,“Suburban Boardinghouses: Contesting Commercial Homeownership in Southern California”
Oct 19:	Yingyao Wang, “Official Rotation and Interstitial Emergence: Corruption and the Rise of Alternative Political Networks in China”
Oct 26:	Abram de Swaan, “Against Women: The Worldwide War Against Emancipation by Religious Fundamentalists and Extreme Rightists”
Nov 30:	Jacob Faber, “Black Lives Matter and the Shifting Geography of Implicit Racial Bias”
Dec 7:	Margaret Frye, “Balancing Gender at Work: Contradictory Identities and Feminized Ambition Among University Graduates in Kampala”

Spring 2023

Apr 13:	Choon Hwee Koh, “Phatic Numbers and Quantification in the Eighteenth-Century Ottoman Empire: The Case of the Relay Postal System”
Apr 20:	Kalyani Monteiro Jayasankar, “Time and Tide: Temporal Inequalities in Residential Decisions around Climate Change”
Apr 27:	Katherine Jensen, “Racialized Logics and Bureaucratic Mandates: Immigrant Legalization and The Production of Differential Belonging”
May 11:	Roger Waldinger, Nathan Hoffmann, and Peter Catron, “Impeding Access: Immigrants and Naturalization in Early Twentieth-Century America”
May 18:	Kevin Wei Luo, “Securing the Countryside: Varieties of Rural State Building in China, Vietnam, Taiwan,and South Korea during the Cold War”
Jun 1:	Iddo Tavory, “Kill Your Darlings: Patterns of Attachment and Detachment”

Winter 2023

Jan 19:	Andrew Chalfoun, Giovanni Rossi, and Tanya Stivers, “To Err Is Human But To Persist Is Diabolical: Rebuking Departures In Social Interaction”
Jan 26:	César J. Ayala, “The Paradox of Black Incomes in Puerto Rico in the Early Decades of U.S. Colonialism”
Feb 9:	Abigail Weitzman, “It’s Complicated: Migration Motivations Among Asylum Seekers and Other Migrants in Need of International Protection in Costa Rica”
Feb 16:	Max Besbris, “A Rapidly Changing Ecology of Aid: Temporality, Help-Seeking, and Stigma after Disaster”
Mar 1:	Yael Berda, “Hybrid Bureaucracy: How racial domination shaped organizations – contemporary lessons from colonial administrations in the British Empire”
Mar 9:	Marco Garrido, “Corruption as Socially Embedded.” Co-sponsored by UCLA Center for Southeast Asian Studies.

Fall 2022

Oct 6:	Daniel Laurison, “Missing Voices: An Alternative Explanation for Economic Inequality in Political Participation”
Oct 13:	Gilad Wenig, “Purging to Transform the Post-Colonial State: Evidence from the 1952 Egyptian Revolution”
Oct 27:	Josh Pacewicz, “Why did Jay Ashcroft go to St Louis?” (chapter from Architects of the Divided States)
Nov 3:	Adrienne Sörbom, “Discreet Diplomacy: Practices of Secrecy in Transnational Think Tanks” (co-authored with Christina Garsten)
Nov 10:	Dorit Geva, “Beyond Populism: The European Far Right and its Statist Ambitions”
Nov 17:	John Clegg, “Slavery’s Carceral Legacy in the Postbellum South”

Spring 2022

Apr 7:	Jenifer Bratter, Rice University, “Biracial or Black When Saying ‘I Do’: Considering Racial Differences in Delays to Marriage for Black, White, and Black-White Women”
Apr 28:	Adia Harvey Wingfield, Washington University in St. Louis, “Colorblind or Color Conscious? Millennials and Corporate Diversity Ideology”
May 12:	Bowei Hu, UCLA, “Families in the Red: How Banking Systems Drive Household Debt”
May 19:	Whitney Laster Pirtle, UC Merced, “Centering Race, Centering ‘Coloured’ South Africans”
Jun 2:	Brandon Andrew Robinson, UC Riverside, “Super Straights: On Transphobia, Genital Preferences, and the White Supremacy of Hyper-Normal Heterosexual Identity”

Winter 2022

Jan 13:	Anna Grzymala-Busse, Stanford University, “Tilly Goes to Church: The Medieval and Religious Roots of the European State”
Jan 27:	Michael McCarthy, Marquette University, “The Problem of Class Abstraction: Culture and Class Formation in Social Theory”
Feb 17:	Ricado Jacobs, UC Santa Barbara, “Land for Livelihoods: Urban Agriculture and the Agrarian Question in the 21st Century”
Feb 24:	Jennifer Derr, UC Santa Cruz, “Digging Up the Environment in the Practice of Medicine: The Trajectories of Liver Disease in Twentieth-Century Egypt”
Mar 3:	Nicholas DiRago, UCLA, “Organizational Heterogeneity and Urban Political Economy: How Land Banks Govern Property in Abandoned Neighborhoods in the United States, 2009–2019”
Mar 10:	Drew Halfmann, UC Davis, “Presidential Framing of Health Inequalities by Race and Income”

Fall 2021

Sept 30:	Michael Mann, UCLA, “Reflections on the Causes and Rationality of War”
Oct 7:	Wisam Alshaibi, UCLA, “Transnational Political Opposition and Domestic Foreign Policy Elites: The Making of Regime Change in Iraq”
Oct 14:	Michele Bratcher Goodwin, UC Irvine, “Law and Anti-Blackness”
Oct 28:	Aaron Panofsky, UCLA, “Plus ça Change: Intelligence, Behavior, and Race”
Nov 4:	Audrye Wong, University of Southern California, “Divide to Conquer? How Authoritarian Regimes Use Wedge Narratives to Marginalize Diaspora Communities”
Nov 18:	Alden Young, UCLA, “Remaking the Kingdom of Kush: The Greater Horn of Africa in the Imagination of Hajj Hamad”
Dec 2:	Ho-fung Hung, Johns Hopkins University, “The Dollar Cycle of International Development, 1973–2017” and “Repressing Labor, Empowering China”

Spring 2021

Apr 8:	Dan Slater, University of Michigan, “Populism and the Past: Restoring, Retaining, and Redeeming the Nation”
Apr 22:	Lachlan McNamee, UCLA, “Unsettled Frontiers: The Rise and Fall of Settler Colonialism”
May 13:	Andrew Schrank, Brown University, “Consumer Protection and the Contractor State: The Case of the Pharmaceutical Industry in the Dominican Republic”
May 20:	Egor Lazarev, Yale University, “State-Building as Lawfare: Custom, Sharia, and State Law in Postwar Chechnya”
May 27:	Jonah Stuart Brundage, Michigan University, “Representation and Recognition: State Sovereignty as Performative”

Winter 2021

Jan 28:	Trevon Logan, The Ohio State University, “Competition and Discrimination in Public Accommodations: Evidence from the Green Books”
Feb 11:	Hajar Yazdiha, University of Southern California, “Don’t Kill the Messenger: Strategic Uses of Collective Memory and the Identity Politics of Cultural Resonance”
Feb 25:	Yan Long, Berkeley, “Datafying Human Rights? The Enactment and Rejection of Reactivity in Chinese AIDS Activism, 2006-2018”
Mar 4:	Ian Grey, UCLA, “Multilateralism of the Marginal: How the ‘Global South’ Finds its Voice in International Political Deliberations”
Mar 11:	Aruna Ranganathan, Stanford University, “A Class of Their Own: Cultural Capital and the Consent to Appropriation of Occupational Jurisdiction”

Fall 2020

Oct 8:	Amin Ghaziani, The University of British Columbia, “Why Gayborhoods Matter: The Street Empirics of Urban Sexualities”
Oct 15:	Anna Skarpelis, Harvard University, “When Whiteness Fails: Mixed-Race Germans and the Multiple Ontologies of Race in Nazi Germany (1933-1945)”
Oct 29:	Zophia Edwards, Providence College, “Moving the State: Workers, Oil, and Development in Trinidad and Tobago”
Nov 5:	Alexandre White, The Johns Hopkins University, “Pricing Pandemics: Necrofinance and the World Bank”
Nov 11:	Xiaohong Xu, University of Michigan, “The Great Separation: The Chinese Cultural Revolution and the Political Origins of Contemporary China in Global Capitalism”

Spring 2020

Apr 9:	Juan Pablo Pardo-Guerra, UC San Diego, “Disciplined: How Research Evaluations Transformed the Social Sciences in Britain, 1970-2018”
May 7:	Rene Almeling, Yale University, “Biological Stories and Gendered Beliefs”
May 28:	Eduardo Duran, University of California, Los Angeles, “The Culture of the Senses: Between Enlightenment and Madness.”

Winter 2020

Jan 1:	Maryam Alemzadeh, Brandeis University, “Routines of a Revolution: Institutions and Everyday Practice in 1979 Iran”
Jan 23:	Nihal Kayali, University of California, Los Angeles, “Organizational Precarity: Temporary Protection and Syrian Refugee-Run Healthcare in Turkey”
Feb 6:	Isaac Reed, University of Virginia, “Kafka’s Sociology: On the Relationship of Authority to Power in the Modern World”
Feb 13:	Michael Albertus, University of Chicago, “Trajectories and Consequences of Authoritarian Elite Persistence Under Latin American Democracy”
Mar 5:	Erin McDonnell, Notre Dame University, “The Iron Cradle: A Cross-National Analysis of How Weberian Bureaucracy Affects Child Mortality”

Fall 2019

Oct 10:	-Melani Cammett, Harvard University, “Outgroup Generosity despite Prejudice: Access to Social Services for Syrian Refugees in Lebanon”
Oct 24:	Juan Delgado, Fellow, University of California San Diego, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, “Legitimation of Centrality: Categorization Practices in the Emergence of Ethnoracial Political Fields”
Nov 9:	Christopher Muller and Dan Schrage, UC Berkeley and University of Southern California, “The Political Economy of Incarceration in the U.S. South, 1910-1925: Evidence from a Shock to Tenancy and Sharecropping”
Dec 5:	Ryan Calder, Johns Hopkins University, “A Comparative Sociology of Islamic Finance”

Spring 2019

Apr 11:	Steven Hitlin, The University of Iowa, “Nuance: FMK?” with Aliza Luft
Apr 25:	Karen Barkey, University of California Berkeley, “Negotiating Presence: Sharing Sacred Sites in Contemporary Istanbul”
May 9:	Maria Abascal, Columbia University, “Diversity or Outgroup Share? Explaining 311 Calls in NYC Neighborhoods”

Winter 2019

Jan 1:	Charles Seguin, Pennsylvania State Sociology, “Boundary Spillover: Group Boundaries and the Rise of Anti-Lynching Politics in the US” with Sabrina Nardin
Feb 28:	Ellis Monk, Harvard University, “Linked Fate, Racial Identity, and Mental Health among African Americans”
Mar 8:	Wendy Pearlman, Northwestern University, “The Feeling of Belonging: Syrian Identity between Home and Exile”

Fall 2018

Oct 18:	Bart Bonikowski, Harvard Sociology, “Populism as Dog-Whistle Politics: Anti-Elite Discourse and Sentiments toward Minorities” with Yueran Zhang
Nov 29:	katrina quisumbing-king, University of Southern California, “Institutionalized Ambiguity in Legal Status: Managing the Tensions of U.S. Imperial Rule in the Philippines”

Spring 2018

Apr 26:	Leydy Diossa, UCLA, “Emigrants’ Political Rights in Latin America: Democracy, Norms, and Experts (1960-2017).”
May 10:	Paul Lichterman, University of Southern California, “How Civic Action Works: Tackling Housing Problems in Los Angeles.”
May 24:	Deisy del Real, UCLA, “Empowered, Persuaded, and Coerced: Paraguay’s Role in the Negotiations of the Mercosur Residency Agreements.”
Jun 7:	John Levi Martin, University of Chicago, “Size Matters: How to Control for Population Size in Ecological Analysis.”

Winter 2018

Jan 18:	Darin Christensen, UCLA Luskin School of Public Policy, “Healthcare Delivery during Crises: Experimental Evidence from Sierra Leone’s Ebola Outbreak.”
Feb 1:	Sherry B. Ortner, UCLA Anthropology, “Fraud, and the Tangled Relationship between Kinship and Capitalism: The Case of Bernie Madoff.”
Feb 8:	Frederick Wherry, Princeton Sociology, “To Lend or Not to Lend to Friends and Kin: Awkwardness, Obfuscation, and Negative Reciprocity.”
Mar 1:	Yang Su, UC Irvine, “Deadly Decision of Beijing: Succession Politics and Protest Repression in 1989.”

Fall 2017

Oct 5:	Aomar Boum, UCLA, “A Righteous Sultan?’: The Memory of Mohammed V as Protector of Moroccan Jews in Holocaust Geographies”
Oct 19:	Nico Voightländer, UCLA, “Highway to Hitler: Examining the Relationship between Infrastructure Spending and Support for Autocracy”

Spring 2017

Apr 5:	Ryan Centner, LSE, “Urban Afterlives: Buenos Aires and the Wake of GLobal Adjustment”
Apr 13:	Monica Prasad, Northwestern, “The European Welfare State as Neoliberal Project”
May 11:	Sabeel Rahman, Brooklyn Law School, “Private Power, Public Values: Regulating Social Infrastructure in a Changing Economy”
May 25:	Matthew Mahutga, UC Riverside, “Income Polarization in Rich Democracies: Household Composition, Labor Markets, and Socio-Economic Change”
Jun 1:	Herbert S. Klein, Columbia, “History and the Social Sciences”

Winter 2017

Jan 19:	Tianna Paschel, UC Berkeley African American Studies, “Beyond Colorblindness: Race, Public Discourse and the Cultural Outcomes of Social Movements in Colombia and Brazil.”
Feb 2:	Mark Sawyer, UCLA Political Science, “Racial Republicanism: Republicanism and Black Political Thought.”
Feb 16:	Daniel Navon, UCSD, “Mobilizing Mutations: New Kinds of People at the Intersection of Genetics and Patient Advocacy.”
Mar 2:	Chris Smith, UC Davis, “Gender, the Criminal Elite, and the Structure of Chicago Organized Crime Networks.”
Mar 16:	Chris Rea, UCLA, “The Nature of Regulation: Explaining Patterns of Regulatory Marketization and the Case of Ecological Offsetting in the United States and Germany.”

Fall 2016

Sep 29:	Philippe Bourgois, Department of Anthropology, UCLA, “The Symbolic Violence of Primitive Accumulation in US Inner City Narcotic Markets and the War on Drugs.”
Oct 13:	Phil Gorski, Yale University, “After Positivism: Critical Realism and Historical Sociology.”
Oct 27:	Josh Pacewicz, Brown University, “Partnering with the Strong but Blind State: How Civic Associations Co-create Policy when Implementing the Affordable Care Act.”
Nov 10:	Andrea Yewon Lee, Sociology Department, UCLA, “Reinventing Movement Protagonists: South Korea’s Anti Gentrification Movement.”

Spring 2016

Apr 7:	Anthony Pagden, UCLA Political Science, “Reinventing the Idea of Europe: 1815-1919.”
May 19:	Greta Krippner, University of Michigan, “Democracy of Credit: Ownership and the Politics of Credit in Late-Twentieth Century America

Winter 2016

Jan 7:	Lisa Blaydes, Stanford Political Science, “Mirrors for Princes and Sultans: Advice on the Art of Gover,nance in the Medieval Christian and Islamic Worlds .”
Jan 28:	Zach Griffen, UCLA “Seeing Like a Firm: The ‘Education Production Function’ and the Politics of Expertise.”
Feb 11:	Genevieve Zubrzycki, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, “Nationalism, “Philosemitism,” and Symbolic Boundary-Making in Contemporary Poland.”
Feb 18:	Javier Auyero, University of Texas, Austin, “The Experience and Perception of Fracking: Relations, Routines, and Collective Action Outcomes.”

Fall 2015

Sep 24:	Neil Gong, UCLA, “‘That Proves You Mad, Because You Know It Not’: Impaired Insight for Psychosis and the Liberal Dilemma of Madness.”
Oct 8:	Andrew Le, UCLA,”The Limits to Decoupling Ethnicity from Religion: A Case Study of a Japanese Buddhist Temple.”
Feb 11:	Ananya Roy, UCLA Public Affairs, “Dis/possessive Collectivism: Property and Personhood at City’s End.”
Feb 18:	Marc Schneiberg, Reed College, “Losing their way? Credit Unions’ Embrace of Market-based Investment Practices”

Spring 2015

Apr 2:	Ted Porter, UCLA, “Recording Heredity on Forms of Insanity “
Apr 16:	Lauren Duquette-Rury, UCLA, “Voice and Exit: The Paradox of Cross-Border Politics in Mexico”
Apr 30:	Emily Ryo, USC, “Legitimacy in Immigration Detention”
May 14:	Patrick Heller, Brown, “Development in the City: Growth and Inclusion in India, Brazil and South Africa”
May 28:	Lieba Faier, UCLA, “The ‘Need to Know’: Principled Secrecy and the Work of Freedom in Recent Efforts to Fight Human Trafficking to Japan”

Winter 2015

Jan 8:	Jacob Thomas, UCLA , “The Institutional Foundation of Diverse Immigration to Canada and Australia”
Jan 22-23:	237 Alumni Reunion Conference
Feb 5:	Jacob Foster, UCLA, “Tradition and Innovation in Scientist’s Research Strategies.”
Feb 19:	Juan Delgado, UCLA, : “The Non-Ethnic Origins of an Ethnic Category: The Emergence of ³Black Communities”
Mar 5:	Michael Goldman, Minnesota, “Financial Magic and the Urban Hustle: Creating Upheaval in the US, Spain, and India.”

Fall 2014

Oct 9:	Dylan Riley, UC Berkeley , “The Social Foundations of Positivism: The Case of Late Nineteenth Century Italy.” (co-authored work with Patricia Ahmed of South Dakota State University, and Rebecca Emigh of UCLA).
Oct 23:	Ann Hironaka, UC Irvine, “Learning from History: The Difficulties of Military Planning.”
Nov 6:	Fatma Müge Göçek, University of Michigan, “Denial of Violence: Ottoman Past, Turkish Present and the Collective Violence against the Armenians, 1789-2009.” (selection from book proofs)
Nov 20:	Matías Fernández, UCLA, “Authoritarianism by Other Means? The Politics of Clientelism and Expertise in Two Cities.”
Dec 4:	Andrew Herman, UCLA, “Challenges to Nazi symbolic power in the American Midwest, 1932-1935.”

Spring 2014

Apr 3:	John Skrentny, Department of Sociology, UC San Diego, “The Political Sociology of Regional Variations: Family Migration in Europe, North America, and East Asia.”
Apr 7:	Fred Block, Research Professor, UC Davis, “Capitalism: The Future of an Illusion”-Book Discussion with the The Contentious Politics and Organizations Working Group
Apr 17:	Lori Yue, USC Marshall School of Business, “Elite-Driven Community Collective Action and the Issues of Currency Substitutes During the Panic of 1907.”
May 1:	Michael Hechter, School of Politics and Global Studies, Arizona State University, “The Problem of Solidarity in Insurgent Collective Action: The Nore Mutiny of 1797.”
May 15:	Mara Loveman, Department of Sociology, UC Berkeley, “From Melting Pots to Mosaics: Domestic Activism, International Organizations, and the Official Unmixing of Latin American Populations.”
May 29:	Celeste Watkins-Hayes, Department of Sociology and Department of African American Studies, Northwestern University, “Intersectionality and the Sociology of HIV/AIDS: Past, Present and Future Reearch Directions.”

Winter 2014

Jan 9:	Thomas Soehl, Language, Religion and the Schooling Experiences of the Children of Immigrants in France
Jan 23:	Tom Hannan (canceled, no paper)
Feb 6:	Johanna Bockman, Socialist Globalization: Decolonization, Non-Aligned Economic Institutions, and the Debt Crisis
Feb 20:	Michael Storper, The Sources of Urban Development: Wages, Housing and Amenity Gaps across American Cities
Mar 6:	John R. Hall, Patrimonialism Making Modernity: The U.S. Public Domain from Colonial Times to the Late Nineteenth Century

Spring 2013

Apr 4:	Ed Walker and Chris Rea, UCLA, “Opting Out: How Vaccine Policy, Natural Parenting, and Access to Care Shape Nonmedical Exemptions to School Immunization Mandates”
Apr 18:	Jaeeun Kim, Stanford, “Seeking Asylum, Finding God: Unauthorized Migration, the Ethnic Church, and Conversion for Immigration Purposes”
May 2:	Chris Rea, UCLA, “Governing with Markets: Environmental Protection, Fields of Contention and the Rise of Public Market-Oriented Governance”
May 16:	Mark Anner, Penn State, TBA
May 20:	Gustav Brown, UCLA, TBA

Winter 2013

Jan 10:	Ching Kwan Lee (UCLA) and Yong Zhang (Sun Yat Sen University), Domination by depoliticization: unraveling the micro-foundations of bargained authoritarianism in China
Jan 24:	Shizheng Feng (Renmin University of China) and Yang Su (UC Irvine), “The Making of the Maoist Model in the Post-Mao Era:The Myth of Nanjie Village”
Feb 7:	Matt Desmond (Harvard University) “Mechanisms of Neighborhood Selection: Why and How Poor Families Move.”
Feb 21:	Philippe Duhart, UCLA, “ Terrorism and Social Movement Formation in Northern Ireland and the Basque Country.”
Mar 7:	Dan Slater (University of Chicago), “The strength to concede: ruling parties and democratization in developmental Asia.”

Fall 2012

Oct 3:	Aaron Panofsky, UCLA , Misbehaving Science: Controversy and the Development of Behavior Genetics
Oct 17:	Caitlin Patler, UCLA , Undocumented Youth Organizations, Anti-Deportation Campaigns, and the Boundaries of Membership
Oct 31:	Stefan Bargheer, UCLA , Tocqueville and the Invention of American Exceptionalism, 1941-1963
Nov 14:	Catherine (Katie) Bolzendahl, UC-Irvine (with Rottem Sagi) ‘Good’ Citizens Under God? Individual and Institutional Religious Influences on Citizenship Norms and Participation
Dec 5:	Alwyn Lim, USC , Constructing Global Fields: Actorhood and Otherhood in the Moral Regulation of the Global Economy

Spring 2012

Apr 5:	David Trouille, Sociology, UCLA. “ Fencing a field: Imagined others in the rise and fall of a neighborhood park conflict”
Apr 19:	Stephen Vaisey, Sociology, Duke, “Cultural Depth and Social Change”
May 3:	Winston Chou, Sociology, UCLA. “Two Arcs of Kurdish Nationalism The Meaning of “Terror” in Kurdistan, 1984-1999”
May 17:	Akhil Gupta, Anthropology, UCLA, “”Theorizing Indian Political Economy After Market Reforms”
May 31:	Chris Tilly, Urban Planning and Institute for Research on Labor and Employment, UCLA. “Union strategic research: Why, how, and so what?”

Winter 2012

Jan 12:	Jason Beckfield, Sociology, Harvard. “Regional Integration and the Convergence of European Welfare States”
Jan 26:	Susanna Hecht, Urban Planning, UCLA. “The Natures of Progress: Land use dynamics and forest trends in Latin America and Caribbean”
Feb 9:	David Frank, Sociology, UC Irvine. “Worldwide Trends in the Criminal Regulation of Sex, 1945 to 2005”
Feb 23:	Tamara Kay, Sociology, Harvard. “Diffusion as Negotiation: The Relational Dynamics of How Innovations are Localized and Why They Stick”
Mar 8:	Adrian Favell, Sciences Po. “Rise and Decline: Japan as the Model of the “Post-Bubble” Society”

Fall 2011

Sep 29:	Marie Berry, Sociology, UCLA. “From Violence to Mobilization: The Rise of Rwanda’s Women”
Oct 13:	Hannah Landecker, Sociology, UCLA. “Food as exposure: Nutritional epigenetics and the new metabolism”
Oct 27:	Michael Ross, Political Science, UCLA. “The Oil Curse: How Petroleum Wealth Shapes the Development of Nations”
Nov 10:	Francesca Polletta, Sociology, UC Irvine. “Is the Public Sphere Feminized? Gender in Public Deliberation”
Dec 1:	Amy Zhou, Sociology, UCLA. “Race Logic and a Health Reality: Accountability and the “Racialization” and “Deracializaiton” of Health Services”

Spring 2011

Mar 31:	Joshua Bloom , “Retrodicting Insurgent Mobilization: Contested Legitimacy in the Civil Rights Movement”
Apr 14:	Rick Baldoz and César Ayala “The Bordering of America: Colonialism and Citizenship in the Philippines and Puerto Rico”
Apr 28:	Perry Anderson, “Speculations on Multi-Culturalism“
May 12:	Matthias Koenig, “Human rights, judicial politics and the secularization of nation-states – Contentions over religion at the European Court of Human Rights”
May 26:	R. Bin Wong, “Before and Beyond Divergence: the Politics of Economic Change in China and Europe.”

Winter 2011

Jan 13:	Dan Lainer-Vos (USC) “ Manufacturing national bonds: gift giving, market exchange and the construction of transatlantic national markets”
Jan 27:	Bruce Carruthers (Northwestern) “Calculability and Trust: Credit Rating in Nineteenth-Century America”
Feb 10:	Noah Grand (UCLA) TBA”
Feb 24:	Peter Evans (UC Berkeley) “Rethinking Neo-Polanyian Optimism: Transnational Politics After the Decline of Neoliberalism”
Mar 10:	Antonio Guzman (UCLA) “ Imposing capitalism: Cuba and Taiwan in the early 1900s”

Fall 2010

Sep 30:	Abigail Saguy and Anna Ward, “Coming Out as Fat: Rethinking Stigma”
Oct 14:	Matt Baltz, “Protecting citizens in times of economic distress: State expansion, citizenship, and repatriation pressures in the United States and France during the 1930s”
Oct 28:	Roger Waldinger, “Politics beyond borders: Sending states and “their” emigrants”
Nov 11:	Zeynep Ozgen, “Marriage and Ethno-Religious Boundaries in a Multiethnic Society”
Dec 2:	Jeff Goodwin, “When Terrorism Makes Sense”

Spring 2010

Apr 1:	Elena Shih, UCLA, Sociology Department, “Globalizing Justice: The Transnational Moral Economy of Women’s Work in the Global Anti-Trafficking Movement”
Apr 15:	Fred Block, UC Davis, Sociology Department, “Crisis and Renewal: The Outlines of a 21st Century New Deal”
Apr 28:	Andrew Walder, Stanford University, Sociology Department, “The Property Revolution: Conflict and Change in Transitional Economies.”
May 13:	Philip McMichael, Cornell University, Department of Development Sociology, “A Food Regime Perspective on Millennium Developments”
May 27:	Julia Tomassetti, UCLA, Sociology Department, “Who is a Worker? Ideology and Partisanship on the National Labor Relations Board at the Turn of the 21st Century”

Winter 2010

Jan 7:	Nina Bandelj (UC Irvine): TBA
Jan 21:	Marion Fourcade (UC Berkeley): “Cents and sensibility: economic valuation and the nature of ‘nature’ in France and America”
Feb 4:	Kyle Armone (UCLA): “In Solidarity? Re-examining the Determinants of Failure: The 1996 Port Truckers’ Campaign”
Feb 18:	Ching Kwan Lee (UCLA): “The Labor Question of Chinese Capitalism in Africa”
Mar 4:	Michael Mann (UCLA): “The rise and fall of neo-liberalism”

Fall 2009

Oct 1:	Gail Kligman (UCLA): “Peasants Into Party Members: The Restratification and Bureaucratization of Rural Life”
Oct 13:	(Tuesday): Violaine Roussel (University of Paris VIII): “Speaking in the Name of the Public: A Sociology of American Celebrities’ Claim to Represent in the Context of the War in Iraq”
Oct 29:	Cihan Tugal (UC Berkeley): “Paths of Islamization: Political Society in Turkey, Egypt and Iran”
Nov 19:	Iddo Tavory (UCLA): “Layers of Distinction: The Organization of Differences in the Orthodox Neighborhood”
Dec 13:	Margaret Somers (Michigan): “Free-Market Utopianism: From Market fundamentalism to Karl Polanyi’s Reality of Society”

Spring 2009

Apr 23:	Philip Gorski (Yale) A Neo-Weberian Theory of Civil Religion
May 7:	Susan Watkins (UPenn) and Ann Swidler (UCB) “Teach a Man to Fish”: The Sustainability Doctrine and its Social Consequences
May 21:	Special session: perspectives on the crisis
Jun 4:	Stela Krasteva (UCLA) lStructure, Opportunity, Agency, and Contingency as Conditions for Politicizing Ethnicity: Ataka and “The Roma” in Bulgaria

Winter 2009

Jan 15:	Miguel Centeno (Princeton) Professor of Sociology, Princeton University Liberalism Without State or Nation
Jan 29:	Monica Prasad (Northwestern) “The Non-History of National Sales Tax: An ‘Old Institutionalist’ Theory of Path Dependence.”
Feb 12:	Andreas Wimmer and Yuval Feinstein (UCLA) The global spread of the nation-state. A quantitative exploration, 1789-2001
Feb 26:	Jack Katz “Time for New Urban Ethnographies”
Mar 12:	Angela Jamison , UCLA “Ethical exuberance and the bromides of carbon offsets”

Fall 2008

Oct 9:	Wes Hiers (UCLA), “The Colonial Roots of Racialized Polities”
Oct 23:	John Padgett (U Chicago political science), “Open Elite? Social Mobility, Marriage and Family in Renaissance Florence, 1282-1500.”
Nov 6:	Michael Mann (UCLA), “Trajectories through the 20th Century of the Varieties of Capitalism and Welfare States.”
Nov 20:	Rogers Brubaker and Jaeeun Kim (UCLA), “Transborder Nationhood and the Politics of Belonging in Germany and Korea.”
Dec 4:	Peter Baldwin (UCLA history), “The Narcissism of Minor Differences How America Resembles Europe.”

Spring 2008

Apr 10:	Rob Jansen, UCLA, “Populist Mobilization: The Emergence of a New Mode of Political Practice in Early 20th Century Peru”
Apr 24:	Loic Wacquant, University of California, Berkeley, “Comparing Apples and Oranges: Revisiting Urban Marginality in Europe and America”
May 8:	Gustav Brown, UCLA, “Framing Matters: Activists, Institutions and Interpretations of Violence in West Kalimantan & Ambon”
May 22:	Julia Adams, Yale University, “Poststructuralist Foundations of Social Theory, or the Unknown James Coleman”
Jun 5:	Deborah Yashar, Princeton University, “Violence, Citizenship, and Public Security in Post-Authoritarian Latin America”

Winter 2008

Jan 17:	Roger Waldinger, UCLA, “Rethinking Transnationalism”
Jan 31:	James Mahoney, “The Logic of Historical Explanation”
Feb 14:	Sherry Ortner, Department of Anthropology, UCLA, “Failure to protect: Pedophiles and parents in recent independent cinema”
Feb 28:	Daniel N. Posner, Department of Political Science, UCLA, “Political Sources of Ethnic Identification in Africa”

Fall 2007

Oct 11:	John Foran, University of California, Santa Barbara. “Taking Power Revolutions Past and Future”
Oct 25:	Fabio Rojas, University of Indiana. “Spillover and Mobilization in the American Antiwar Movement”
Nov 8:	Matt Vidal, UCLA, “The Labor Process Revisited Institutional Polymorphism and Organizational Political Economy in the Manufacturing Field.”
Nov 15:	Hazem Kandil, UCLA Dept of Sociology “The Islamist Socialization of the Egyptian Middle Class Intelligentsia.”
Nov 29:	Lynne Zucker and Michael Darby, UCLA, “Knowledge Transmission and Self-Organizing Social Expectations and Action”

Spring 2007

Apr 4:	Isaac Martin, Sociology, UC San Diego: “A Rich People’s Movement? The Campaign to Repeal the Sixteenth Amendment”
Apr 19:	Kiser, Edgar and Welser, Howard T. University of Washington and Cornell University: “The Relationship Between Theory and History in Evolutionary Biology: A Model for Historical Sociology”
May 3:	Bill Roy and Dowd, Timothy O., Sociology, UCLA: “What is Sociological about Music?”
May 17:	Cheris Shun-Ching Chan, Sociology, Pittsburgh and Global Fellows Program, International Institute, UCLA: “How Culture Matters in Making a Market: The Case of Life Insurance in China.”
May 31:	Josh Bloom: Sociology, UCLA: “Black anti-colonialism, Truman’s adoption of civil rights advocacy, and the dual character of political opportunity.”

Winter 2007

Jan 11:	Wesley Hiers, Sociology, UCLA (graduate student): “Democracy and Racial Closure: The 19th Century United States in Comparative Perspective”
Jan 25:	Scott Washington, Sociology, UCLA: “The Blood of Homer Plessy: A Second Look at the Case of Plessy v. Ferguson”
Feb 8:	Dylan Riley, Sociology, UC Berkeley (former UCLA student): Chapter One of The Civic Foundations of Fascism
Feb 22:	Nitsan Chorev, Sociology, Brown University (former UCLA Global Fellow): “Trading in the State: US Trade Policy, Institutions, and the Politics of Globalization.”
Mar 8:	David Meyer, Sociology, UC Irvine: “War and Peace Movements in American Political Development”

Fall 2006

Oct 5:	A special session that deviates from the normal format. There is no paper to read, but instead an “Author-Meets-Critics session on Ruth Milkman’s new book, “LA Story: Immigrant Workers and the Future of the U.S. Labor Movement” Critics are Daniel Mitchell, Management and Public Affairs, UCLA; Katherine Stone, Law, UCLA; and Maurice Zeitlin, Sociology, UCLA.
Oct 19:	Andreas Wimmer, Sociology, UCLA and Brian Min: “From Empire to Nation-State. Explaining wars in the modern world, 1816-2001.”
Nov 2:	Paul Lichterman, Sociology, University of Southern California. “Social capital or group style? Rescuing Tocqueville’s insights on civic engagement”
Nov 16:	Jaeeun Kim, Sociology, UCLA. ” Incorporating Koreans Abroad”: The Politics of Membership in South Korea
Nov 30:	Mark Sawyer, Political Science, UCLA. “Nationhood, Blacks and Race in the Americas: A Race Cycles Approach”

Spring 2006

Jan 12:	Robert Brenner, History, UCLA: “Property and Progress: Where Adam Smith Went Wrong”
Jan 19:	Lane Kenworthy, Sociology, Arizona: “Taxes, Inequality, and Employment.”
Feb 9:	Edwin Amenta, Sociology, UC Irvine: “Complete Coverage: A New Approach to Social Movements.”
Feb 23:	Kurtulus Gemici, Sociology, UCLA: “Economic Life, Institutions and Social Action: Reflections on Polanyi’s Approach to Studying Economic Life”
Mar 9:	Mick Mann, Sociology, UCLA: “American Empires: The Past and the Present”

Winter 2006

Apr 6:	Charles Camic, “”On Edge: Sociology during the Great Depression and the New Deal”
Apr 20:	Kristin Surak, “Convergence in Foreigners’ Rights and Citizenship Laws Convergence in Foreigners’ Rights and Citizenship Laws”
May 4:	Dan Posner, Institutions and Ethnic Politics in Africa
Jun 1:	Steven Pfaff. University of Washington. “Loyalty and the Theory of Collective Action”
Mar 9:	Mick Mann, Sociology, UCLA: “American Empires: The Past and the Present”

Spring 2005

Apr 7:	David Cook. UCLA “Proactive Recruitment and Retentionist Patterns of Migration and Nationality Policy in Argentina, Italy, and Spain (1850-1919)”
Apr 21:	George Steinmetz. University of Michigan. “From “Native Policy” to Exterminationism: German Southwest Africa, 1904, in Comparative Perspective”
May 5:	Kieran Healy. University of Arizona. “The Political Economy of Presumed Consent”
May 19:	Sanjay Subrahmanyam. UCLA, “Beyond Incommensurability: Understanding Inter-Imperial Dynamics”
Jun 2:	Andreas Wimmer. UCLA. “Elementary Forms of Ethnic Boundary Making: A Processual and Interactionist Approach”

Winter 2005

Jan 13:	Gershon Shafir. University of California, San Diego. “Late Decolonization: Comparing South Africa, Northern Ireland, and Israel/Palestine.”
Jan 27:	Angela Jamison. UCLA. “Embedded on the left: Aggressive media strategies and their organizational impact on the Immigrant Worker Freedom Ride.”
Feb 10:	Nina Glick Schiller. “Transborder Citizenship.”
Feb 10:	Roger Waldinger. UCLA “The Bounded Community: Turning Foreigners into Americans in 21st Century L.A.”
Feb 17:	James Fearon and David Laitin Stanford Univeristy, “Civil War Narratives.”
Feb 24:	Justin Lee. UCLA. “Investigation the Hybridity of ‘Wellness’ Practices.”

Fall 2004

Oct 17:	Charles Ragin and John Sonnet, University of Arizona. “Between Complexity and Parsimony: Limited Diversity, Counterfactual cases, and Comparative Analysis.”
Oct 21:	David Fitzgeral,. UCLA “Ethnographies of Migration.”
Nov 4:	Vivek Chibber. UCLA. “Reviving the Developmental State? The Myth of the National Bourgeoisie.”
Nov 18:	Donald J. Treiman. UCLA “The Growth and Determinants of Literacy in China.”
Dec 12:	Sanford Jacoby. UCLA. “Economic Ideas and the Labor Market: Origins of the Anglo-American Model and Prospects for Global Diffusion.”

Winter 2004

Jan 15:	Andrew Abbott, Sociology, University of Chicago, “The historicality of individuals”
Jan 22:	Rachel Cohen, Sociology, UCLA, “When it Pays to be Friendly: Employment Relations and Worker-Client Interactions in Hairdressing”
Jan 29:	Frank Dobbin, Sociology, Harvard, “How Institutions Create Ideas: Railroad Finance and the Construction of Public and Private in France and the United States.”
Feb 5:	Ödül Bozkurt, Sociology, UCLA, “The Global Corpo-nation?: High-Skilled Workers in Mobile Telecommunications Multinationals.”
Feb 12:	Phil Gorski, Sociology, University of Wisconsin, “Protestantism and Economic Hegemony: Beyond the Weber Thesis.”
Feb 19:	Andrea Grant-Friedman, Sociology, UCLA, “: Standing in the Mirror of World Capitalism: Economic Globalization, the Soviet Union, and the COMECON.”
Feb 26:	Neil Fligstein, Sociology, Berkeley, “The Transformation of the American Economy, 1984-2001”
Mar 4:	Roger Waldinger, Sociology, UCLA, “Immigrant “Transnationalism” and the Presence of the Past”

Fall 2003

Oct 9:	Introductory panel discussion on trends and strategies in comparative research. Rogers Brubaker, “Beyond comparativism”
Oct 16:	Kathleen Thelen, Political Science, Northwestern, “Institutions and Social Change: The Evolution of Vocational Training Institutions in Germany”
Oct 23:	Patrick Le Galès, Institut d’Etudes Politiques, Paris. “The governance of local economies in Europe”
Oct 30:	Kristin Surak, Sociology, UCLA. “Tea: Nationhood and Ethnicity in Japan and LA”
Nov 6:	Kurtulus Gemici, Sociology, UCLA. “Spontaneity in Social Protest: Apr. 2001 Shopkeeper Protests in Turkey”
Oct 30:	Andrew Sabl, Public Policy, UCLA. “Useful Fictions: Why Racial Categories Make No Sense and Why the Census Bureau is Right not to Care.”
Nov 6:	Kanchan Chandra, Political Science, MIT, “A Combinatorial Model of Ethnic Identity Change”