Dr. Douglas V. Porpora

---

			Douglas V. Porpora, Ph.D.
			Professor of Sociology
			Office:	PSA 117
			Phone:	(215) 895-2404
			Email:	porporad @ drexel.edu
	CURRENT AREAS OF RESEARCH War, Genocide, Torture, and Human Rights Macro-Moral Reasoning in Public Sphere Debate Contemporary Social Theory Moral and Political Communication Religion
	SELECTED PUBLICATIONS "Torture, Abuse, Frames, and the Washington Post" with Alexander Nikolaev, forthcoming in Journal of Communication. “Moral Muting in USNewspaper Op-Eds Debating the Attack on Iraq.” With Alexander Nikolaev. Discourse and Communication 2008, 2 (2): 165-184. “Recuperare la Causalitá: Il Metodo del Realismo in Sociologica.” In Andrea Maccarini, Emmanuelle Morandi and Riccardo Prandini (eds.) Realismo Sociologico Genoa, 2008. “Talking War: How Elite U.S. Newspaper Editorials and Opinion Pieces Debated the Attack on Iraq.” With Alexander Nikolaev. 2007 Sociological Focus 40 (1): 6-25. “Are SUV’s the Enemy?”  With David Koch in Anne-Marie Obajtek-Kirkwood, Ernest Hakanen (eds.) Signs of War. From Patriotism to Dissent. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007. “Sociology’s Causal Confusion.” In Ruth Groff (ed.) Revitalizing Causality: Realism About Causality in Philosophy and Social Science. London: Routledge, 2007. "President Bush's Pre-War Rhetoric on Iraq: Paranoid Style in Action" With Alex Nikolaev. Critical Inquiry in Language Studies 2006, 3 (4): 245-262. “Methodological Atheism, Methodological Agnosticism, and Religious Experience.” Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. 2006, 36 (1): 57-75. “Alienation and the Cosmos.” Lauren Langman and Devorah Kalekin Fishman (eds.) The Evolution of Alienation: Trauma, Promise and the Millennium.  Boulder:  Rowman and Littlefield, 2005 “The Spiritual Turn in Critical Realism" New Formations. 2005, 15 91): 147-161. “Bystanders." In Dinah Shelton (ed.) The Encyclopedia of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity. Vol. I: 137-140. New York:  Macmillan, 2005. “Objectivity and Phallogocentrism.” In Margaret Archer and William Outhwaite (eds.) On Objectivity:  A Festschrift for Andrew Collier. Routledge, 2004. “Rationality, Religion, and Experience:  A Response to the Newest Version of The Rational Choice Theory of Religion.” (With Colin Jerolmack) Sociological Theory. 2004, 22 (1): 140-160. “Private Dreams and Collective Ideals.”  In Arthur Shostak (ed.) Viable Utiopian Ideas. New York:  M.E.Sharpe, 2003. "Social Structure: The Future of a Concept." In David Knottnerus and Sing C. Chew (eds.) Structure, Culture, and History: Recent Issues in Social Theory. Rowman and Littlefield, 2003. "Do Realists Run Regressions?" After Postmodernism? Critical Realism. Garry Potter and Jose Lopez (eds.) London:  Continuum, 2001.
	BOOKS Transcendence: Critical Realism and God. With Margaret Archer and Andrew Collier. London: Routledge. 2004. Landscapes of the Soul: The Loss of Moral Meaning in American Life. New York: Oxford University Press.2001. How Holocausts Happen: The United States in Central America. Philadelphia: Temple University. 1990. The Concept of Social Structure. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press.1987.
	Courses Usually Taught: Soc 260 - Classical Social Theory Soc 310 - Topics in Political Sociology Soc 311 - Topics in Sociology of Religion Soc 460 - Contemporary Social Theory Com 701 - Contemporary Social Theory