Faculty

Jeffrey Prager

Professor Emeritus

My research concerns racism, trauma and memory. I examine the role of recognition and acknowledgment in post-conflict societies and the consequences when it does not occur. My work is comparative, focusing on South Africa and the US.

Special interest in past social traumas, and the relation between mechanisms of forgiveness and reparations to the creation of post-traumatic solidaristic communities.

Degrees

Ph. D., University of California, Berkeley (Sociology) Ph.D., Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute (Psychoanalysis)

Awards

Invited Participant, University of California Humanities Research Institute 2003 Faculty Seminar, "Redress in Social Thought, Law, and Literature"

American Council of Learned Societies Fellowship

Visiting Member, School of Social Science, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton

Distinguished Teaching Award, UCLA

Selected Publications

Lost in Translation: Past and Present, Israel Now and the United States Then, A Response by the Author of Presenting the Past to Discussants in the ‘Did It Happen or Did it Not,’ Eshel, ed., forthcoming, in Hebrew

Disrupting the Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma: Recovering Humanity, Repairing Generations, in Breaking Cycles of Repetition: A Global Dialogue on Historical Trauma and Memory, Gobodo-Madikizela, ed., Budrich Academic Press, forthcoming

Review, Enemies on the Couch, A Psychopolitical Journey through War and Peace by Vamik Volkan, The International Journal of Psychoanalysis 96(2015): 503-506

Danger and Deformation: A Social Theory of Trauma Part II: Disrupting the Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma, Recovering Humanity and Repairing Generations, American Imago 72 (2015): 133-155

Melancholia and the Racial Order : A Psychosocial Analysis, Chapter in The Unhappy Divorce between Sociology and Psychoanalysis, Chancer and Andrews (eds.) Palgrave Press, 2014

Prager, Jeffrey. 2011. "Danger and Deformation: A Social Theory of Trauma." American Imago. Vol:68(3): 425-448.

Prager, Jeffrey. 2009. "Melancholic Identity: Post-traumatic Loss, Memory and Identity Formation." Identity in Question, edited by Anthony Elliot and Paul du Gay. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Pp. 139-157

Prager, Jeffrey. 2008. “Healing from History, Psychoanalytic Considerations on Traumatic Pasts and Social Repair.” European Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 11: 405-420

Prager, Jeffrey. 2006. “Beneath the Surface of the Self: Psychoanalysis and the Unseen Known.” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 112: 276-290.

Prager, Jeffrey. 2006. “Jump-Starting Timeliness: Trauma, Temporality and the Redressive Community,” Time and Memory: The Study of Time XII, edited by Jo Parker, Michael Crawford and Paul Harris. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Koninklijke Brill. Pp. 229-245.

Prager, Jeffrey. 2005. “Psychoanalysis and Social Theory.” The Encyclopedia of Social Theory, edited by George Ritzer. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications. Vol. 2: 607-612.

Prager, Jeffrey. 2003. “Lost Childhood, Lost Generations: The Intergenerational Transmission of Trauma.” Journal of Human Rights, Vol. 2: 173-181.

Prager, Jeffrey. 2001. “The Psychology of Collective Memory.” The International Encyclopedia of Social and Behavioral Sciences, edited by Neil Smelser and Paul Bates. Oxford: Pergamon. Pp. 2223-2227.

Prager, Jeffrey. 1998. Presenting the Past: Psychoanalysis and the Sociology of Misremembering. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Prager, Jeffrey, and Michael Rustin, eds. 1993. Psychoanalytic Sociology, Volumes I & II. London, England: Edward Elgar Publishing.