Jeffrey Prager
Biography
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., Sociology, University of California, Berkeley
Ph.D., Psychoanalysis, Southern California Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute
B.A., Sociology, Occidental College
Publications
- Prager, J. (2020). Reading Freud Anew. Soc 57, 265–268 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12115-020-00477-4
- Prager, J. (2020). Do black lives matter? A psychoanalytic exploration of racism and American resistance to reparations. In Post-Conflict Hauntings (pp. 93-118). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
- Prager, J. (2015). Danger and deformation: A social theory of trauma part II: Disrupting the intergenerational transmission of trauma, recovering humanity, and repairing generations. American Imago, 72(2), 133-155.
- Prager, J. (2011). Danger and deformation: A social theory of trauma part I: Contemporary psychoanalysis, contemporary social theory, and healthy selves. American Imago, 425-448.
- Prager, J. (2009). Presenting the past: Psychoanalysis and the sociology of misremembering. Harvard University Press.
- Prager, J. (2008). Healing from history: Psychoanalytic considerations on traumatic pasts and social repair. European journal of social theory, 11(3), 405-420.
- Prager, J. (2009). Melancholic Identities: Post-Traumatic Loss, Memory and Identity Formation. Identity in question, 139.
Awards & Grants
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