Chad Alan Goldberg
Professor of Sociology
8116B Sewell Social Sciences
Tel. (608) 262-2108
E-mail: cgoldber -at- ssc -dot- wisc -dot- edu
Affiliations:
Chad Alan Goldberg is taking a research leave from the University of Wisconsin-Madison during the 2013-2014 academic year to accept a Distinguished Visiting Fellowship at the CUNY Graduate Center's Advanced Research Collaborative.
The course is intended to provide an introductory overview of the discipline of sociology, including: (1) its main sub-fields and specialized areas of research; (2) the theoretical approaches most commonly used in the discipline; and (3) the principal research methods used by sociologists, both quantitative and qualitative. In addition to learning about sociology, you will also learn to write as a sociologist, conduct some forms of sociological research, present your findings, and analyze what sociologists have written.
This course investigates the civil emancipation of European Jews, i.e., the process by which the Jews of Europe acquired full and equal citizenship from the French Revolution in 1789 to the Russian Revolution in 1917. The primary objective is not simply to learn about events in modern Jewish history, but to identify historical patterns and to construct sociological explanations for them. To achieve this goal, the course takes a comparative-historical approach, focusing on Britain, France, Germany (which was not unified until 1871), the Austrian Empire, and Russia (a case of failed emancipation prior to 1917). The course is also intended to introduce students to key themes and ideas in political and comparative-historical sociology, including state formation, citizenship, nationalism, ethnic conflict, and social movements. To this end, we seek to relate emancipation to the broader social forces that transformed Europe in the nineteenth century, especially the development of the modern state and the modern capitalist economy.
This course provides an introduction to three national traditions of social theory—French, German, and American—from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries. This is typically described as the classical period of sociology, when the fundamental ideas of the discipline first took shape. We will examine each of these traditions through the works of key theorists who shaped it and exemplified its major concerns. The course has two main objectives. The first is to investigate the nature and meaning of modernity. The second objective of the course is to familiarize you with some of the key sociological concepts that the classical theorists created or reformulated in order to address this question.
This course has an illustrious history; it was originally taught by the labor historian Selig Perlman and later by the emigré sociologist Hans Gerth. The primary goal of the course as I teach it is to examine the historical development of capitalism, socialism, and democracy in the United States. Throughout the semester, we will try to see what social and political theory have to say to American history and vice versa. The course is organized chronologically in several parts, including the Progressive era; the New Deal; postwar challenges to and criticisms of the New Deal, from the left and the right; the Great Society, the civil rights movement, and the New Left; and the rise of the New Right since the 1970s. As the course moves forward in time, we revisit some general questions that help to give the course thematic unity and coherence. These include questions about the changing and contested meanings of democracy, the relationship between capitalism and democracy, why there has been no significant socialist movement or labor party in the United States, and how the meaning and boundaries of American citizenship have changed over time.
Focusing mainly on citizenship trends in North America and Western Europe, this graduate seminar concentrates on four main themes:(1) the progressive inclusion of previously marginalized or excluded groups as full citizens, and the terms of their incorporation; (2) the erosion of social rights, social citizenship, and the welfare state in the context of neoliberalism and globalization; (3) concerns about the withdrawal of citizens in recent decades from civic engagement and involvement in public life; and (4) the expansion of citizenship, i.e., the shift from single and exclusive citizenship in a nation-state to supra- or postnational citizenship, on the one hand, and dual or multiple citizenship, on the other hand.
Goldberg's areas of specialization include comparative-historical, cultural, and political sociology as well as social theory. His primary interest is the historical sociology of citizenship, broadly understood to include the development of citizenship rights and duties over time, changing levels and forms of civic engagement and political participation, and shifting patterns of civil inclusion and exclusion. His first book, Citizens and Paupers, investigated struggles over the citizenship rights of welfare-state claimants in U.S. history. He is currently working on a new book that compares the portrayal, symbolism, and meaning of the Jews in French, German, and American social theory from the mid-nineteenth to early twentieth centuries.
Discussant for Cybelle Fox, Three Worlds of Relief: Race, Immigration, and the American Welfare State from the Progressive Era to the New Deal (Princeton University Press, 2013), Social Science History Association, Chicago, IL, Nov. 2013.
"Capitalism and the Jews in the Social Thought of Marx and Engels," American Sociological Association, New York, NY, Aug. 2013.
"Capitalism and the Jews in the German Sociological Tradition."
"The Marginal Man Revisited: Jews and Modernity in the Chicago School of Sociology, 1920s to 1930s."