Jeffrey Olick
· William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and History and Director of Grad AdmissionsUniversity of Virginia · Sociology and Anthropology
Active 1989–2025
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About
Jeffrey Olick is the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and History at the University of Virginia. He is a Past President of the Memory Studies Association and an elected member of the Sociological Research Association. Olick received a B.A. with High Honors from Swarthmore College in 1986 and completed his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in Sociology from Yale University in 1993, where his dissertation won the Marvin B. Sussman prize. Prior to his current position, he was a faculty member in the sociology department at Columbia University for eleven years. Olick is a cultural and historical sociologist whose work has focused on collective memory and commemoration, critical theory, transitional justice, postwar Germany, and sociological theory more generally. His current research explores the historical origins of the boundaries between psychology and sociology, the life and work of Maurice Halbwachs, and changes in political culture through conflicts over collective memory. He is actively engaged in speaking at universities, conferences, and public forums worldwide, and his work has been translated into multiple languages including Spanish, German, Polish, Turkish, Estonian, Hungarian, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, and Korean.
Research topics
- Sociology
- Social Science
- Epistemology
- Computer Science
- Political Science
- Psychology
- Psychoanalysis
- Anthropology
- Geography
- Social psychology
Selected publications
What we talk about when we talk about culture: a multi-facet approach
American Journal of Cultural Sociology · 2020 · 78 citations
Senior authorCorrespondingDeleted Journal · 2020 · 30 citations
Senior authorCorrespondingSocial science is parasitical on the world it studies, reconfiguring familiar terms for analytical purposes. This is clear in the history of trauma, which began as a label for physical injury and evolved into a description of psychological suffering. How does social scientists’ embrace of the trauma framework—which bears the marks of its origins in medicine—influence assumptions about the social world we purport to understand and explain? We compare the cultural trauma framework with one of its…
Palgrave Macmillan memory studies · 2022 · 11 citations
Memory and Crisis: An Introduction
Memory Studies · 2021-12-01 · 11 citations
article1st authorKeywords Crisis, democracy, memory, politics of commemoration, states of emergency, American Exceptionalism
Introduction: Taking stock of memory studies
Memory Studies · 2023-12-01 · 9 citations
articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding
Frequent coauthors
- 110 shared
Aleida Assmann
- 108 shared
Susannah Radstone
Centre d'études des relations et des contacts linguistiques et littéraires
- 108 shared
Andrew Hoskins
Deutsche Nationalbibliothek
- 100 shared
Motti Neiger
Bar-Ilan University
- 100 shared
Mary Carruthers
Pennsylvania State University
- 100 shared
Monica Eileen Patterson
- 100 shared
V Seidler
University of Leicester
- 100 shared
Brian Commemoration
Emory University
Awards & honors
- Past President of the Memory Studies Association
- Elected Member of the Sociological Research Association
- Marvin B. Sussman Prize for Dissertation
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