Douglas Harper

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Douglas A. Harper (born 1948) is an American sociologist and photographer. [1] He is the holder of the Rev. Joseph A. Lauritis, C.S.Sp. Endowed Chair in Teaching with Technology at Duquesne University, a chair funded by a grant from the Mellon Foundation. [2]

Contents

Biography

Harper was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. He earned a B.A. from Macalester College in 1970 and a PhD in sociology from Brandeis University. While doing research for his PhD dissertation about railroad tramps, he rode freight trains for 20,000 miles (32,000 km) in the western United States. [3]

Career

After graduation, Harper wrote a book, Good Company, [4] about railroad tramps.

Harper made extensive use of photo elicitation interviews in his 1987 book, Working Knowledge, a sociological treatment of the rural bricoleur in America. [5] His 2001 publication, Changing Works, applied the same method to the historical reconstruction of cultural memory.

Harper later co-authored books on post-colonial culture in Hong Kong, Italian food culture, and the semiotics of Italian fascism, in which he researched images as method of cross-cultural communication. In 2014, he studied the sociology of public space in the Italian piazza and in the de-industrialized regions of the American Rust Belt.

Harper has taught sociology at SUNY Potsdam, the University of South Florida, and Duquesne University, and as a guest professor at the University of Amsterdam and University of Bologna. He edited the academic journal Visual Studies during its first thirteen years and wrote five works of visual ethnography published by the University of Chicago Press. His Visual Sociology (Routledge 2012) is a comprehensive treatment of the topic.

Harper was co-founder of the International Visual Sociology Association with Leonard M. Henny and others; in 2013 he was elected its president. [6]

He has had many photographic exhibitions in the US and abroad.[ citation needed ]

Books

Films

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References

  1. ↑ Mary Strong; Laena Wilder (May 1, 2009). Viewpoints: Visual Anthropologists at Work. University of Texas Press. pp. 38–. ISBN   978-0-292-70671-2.
  2. ↑ "Rev. Joseph A. Lauritis, C.S.Sp. Endowed Chair in Teaching with Technology | Make a Gift | Duquesne University". Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved January 22, 2015.
  3. ↑ Becker, Howard S. (November 1, 2007). Telling About Society. University of Chicago Press. p. 199. ISBN   978-0-226-04126-1.
  4. ↑ Kornblum, William (January 31, 2011). Sociology in a Changing World. Cengage Learning. p. 30. ISBN   978-1-111-30157-6.
  5. ↑ Kolb, Bettina (January 31, 2012). "Unveiling Space by Using Participatory Photo Interview". In Silva, Carlos Nunes (ed.). Online Research Methods in Urban and Planning Studies: Design and Outcomes. IGI Global. pp. 120–137. ISBN   978-1-4666-0075-1.
  6. ↑ "Doug Harper: IVSA President". International Visual Studies Association. Retrieved March 18, 2015.
  7. ↑ Harper, Douglas (2012). Book Review : Douglas Harper, Visual Sociology. New York: Routledge, 2012, 294 pp. Ejournals.library.ualberta.ca. ISBN   978-0-415-77896-1 . Retrieved November 25, 2016.
  8. ↑ "Good Company. Douglas Harper (Book)". Connection.ebscohost.com. January 3, 1982. Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved November 25, 2016.
  9. ↑ "Photographic image of cover of Cape Breton 1952 : The Photographic Vision of Timothy Asch". Ethnographicspress.com. Archived from the original (JPG) on November 14, 2016. Retrieved November 13, 2016.
  10. ↑ "Working Knowledge: Skill and Community in a Small Shop by Douglas Harper" Peter F. Murphy The Oral History Review Vol. 16, No. 2 (Autumn, 1988), pp. 157–159, Oxford University Press
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