April 6, 2016
ADVANCE Distinguished Lecture Series presents Ann Swidler
The ADVANCE Distinguished Lecture Series and Nicolette Manglos-Weber, assistant professor of sociology, will host Ann Swidler, professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley, at 4 p.m. Thursday, April 7, in 105 Umberger Hall. Swidler will present "AIDS Altruism in Africa: A Romance."
Swidler has performed influential work on culture, religion and American society, including the now classic article, "Culture in Action," "Organization Without Authority," 1979 and "Talk of Love: How Culture Matters," Chicago 2001. Swidler is co-author of "Habits of the Heart," "The Good Society" and "Inequality by Design."
She served as a Guggenheim fellow, the French-American Foundation Professor of American Civilization at the EHESS, a fellow of the Successful Societies Program of the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, visiting scholar at the Russell Sage Foundation and fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.
Currently, Swidler studies how societies in sub-Saharan Africa have responded to the AIDS pandemic, and how forms of institutional resilience develop in African chieftaincies. Her recent papers examine the role of nongovernmental organizations in combating the AIDS epidemic in Africa, analyzing how institutional logics and cultural models intersect.