David Cunningham
Associate Professor of Sociology, Director of Graduate Studies
Chair, Social Justice & Social Policy Program
email: dcunning@brandeis.edu
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Focus of Research Social Movements/Collective Action, Community Structure, Collective Memory, Research Methods. Education Ph.D., Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 2000 M.A., Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill 1996 B.S., Civil Engineering, University of Connecticut, 1993 B.A., English, University of Connecticut 1993 |
My current research focuses on the scope, organization, and legacy of racial violence in the American South. My interests center on the Civil Rights-era Ku Klux Klan, in particular the complex roles that the klan played in various communities throughout the 1960s and the enduring community impacts of KKK activity. A related project, undertaken with a number of colleagues and students, seeks to provide research support for the Mississippi Truth Project, an incipient statewide truth and reconciliation commission in Mississippi. By examining the organization of racial violence in Jim Crow Mississippi, we hope to systematically uncover the patterns of institutional complicity that enabled the maintenance of white supremacy.
These projects follow my earlier work on state-based efforts to limit social protest, dealing specifically with the FBI's counterintelligence programs (COINTELPROs) in operation between 1956 and 1971. A book based on that research, There's Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI Counterintelligence, was published in 2004 by the University of California Press.
Additionally, I have an interest in emerging forms of activism, as well as the social processes that mediate activist identities. These topics consume much of my teaching energy, and provide a focus for two "on the road" programs that enable members of the Brandeis community to directly engage with a wide range of communities. The first of these - titled "Possibilities for Change in American Communities" - was offered in 2001, and incorporated a month-long trip around the U.S. in a sleeper bus to examine historical and contemporary activist work in nearly two dozen communities. In 2006, I teamed with Brandeis anthropologist Mark Auslander to offer "Memory and Cultural Production in the Mississippi Delta." As part of a semester-long course, students spent ten days in the Delta pursuing oral history and other community-based work.
Check out the "Possibilities for Change" website at http://www.brandeis.edu/departments/sociology/bus.
Check out the Mississipi Truth Project at
http://www.mississippitruth.org.
Current Projects
White Hoods and Tar Heels: The Rise and Fall of the Civil Rights-era Ku Klux Klan. Book manuscript in progress.
"Enduring Consequences of Failed Right-Wing Activism: Klan Mobilization in the 1960s and Contemporary Crime Rates in Southern Counties." (with Rory McVeigh)
"Capturing the Structure of Musically-Based Youth Subcultures: The Case of 'Emo.'" (with Emilie Hardman and Ann Morrison Spinney)
“Heterodox Political Communities.” (with Miranda Waggoner)
Selected Publications
"The Durability of Collective Memory: Reconciling the 'Greensboro Massacre,'" with Colleen Nugent and Caitlin Slodden. Forthcoming in Social Forces.
"Teaching Graduate and Undergraduate Research Methods: A Multi-Pronged Departmental Initiative," with Sara Shostak, Wendy Cadge, and Jennifer Girouard. Forthcoming in Teaching Sociology.
"Ambivalence and Control: State Action Against the Civil Rights-era Ku Klux Klan." Qualitative Sociology (2009).
”Truth, Reconciliation, and the Ku Klux Klan.” Southern Cultures 14, 3: 68-87 (2008).
”Contexts for Mobilization: Spatial Settings and Klan Presence in North Carolina, 1964-1966,” with Benjamin T.Phillips. American Journal of Sociology 113, 3: 781-814 (2007).
”What If She's From the FBI?” The Effects of Covert Social Control on Social Movements and their Participants,” with John Noakes. Pgs. 175-197 in Surveillance and Governance: Crime Control and Beyond, edited by Mathieu DeFlem. New York: Elsevier (2007).
”Paths to Participation: A Profile of the Civil Rights-Era Ku Klux Klan.” Research in Social Movements, Conflicts and Change 27: 283-309 (2007).
”Surveillance and Social Movements: Lenses on the Repression-Mobilization Nexus.”Contemporary Sociology 36, 2: 120-125 (2007).
“All the Klan’s Men.” Boston Globe (2005).
”What the G-Men Knew.”The New York Times Magazine (2004).
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There's Something Happening Here: The New Left, the Klan, and FBI Counterintelligence. University of California Press (2004). |
“Comparative Collective Community-Based Learning: The ‘Possibilities for Change in American Communities’ Program,” with Cheryl Kingma-Kiekhofer. Teaching Sociology 32: 276-290 (2004).
“The Emergence of ‘Worthy’ Targets: Official Frames and Deviance Narratives within the FBI,” with Barb Browning. Sociological Forum 19, 3: 347-369 (2004).
"The Patterning of Repression: FBI Counterintelligence and the New Left." Social Forces 82, 1: 207-238 (2003).
"Understanding State Responses to Right Vs. Left -Wing Threats: The FBI, the Klan, and the New Left." Social Science History 27, 3: 327-370 (2003).
"State vs. Social Movement: The FBI's COINTELPRO Against the New Left." In Jack Goldstone, ed., States, Parties, & Social Movements: Protest and the Dynamics of Institutional Change. Cambridge University Press (2003).
"An Education in Activism: Teaching and Learning About Social Change on the Road." Brandeis Review 22,1: 38-45 (2001).
"American Sociological Association Elections, 1975-1996: Exploring Explanations for 'Feminization'," with Rachel A. Rosenfeld and Kathryn Schmidt. American Sociological Review 62: 746-759 (1997).