Theda Skocpol

01 / The Detroit story

The Detroit story

Theda Barron was born in Detroit in 1947 to two schoolteachers, and she stayed in Michigan for college, earning a bachelor's degree in sociology at Michigan State University in 1969. There she took part in the movement against the Vietnam War and, through a Methodist student group, spent time teaching English and mathematics at Rust College, a historically Black college in Mississippi. She took her doctorate at Harvard, where she has spent most of her career. Her book States and Social Revolutions (1979), comparing the French, Russian and Chinese revolutions, argued for bringing the state back into the explanation of social change and became a classic of historical sociology. Later work traced the history of U.S. social policy and civic life and, with Vanessa Williamson, the rise of the Tea Party. She has served as president of the American Political Science Association.

Highlights

1. States and Social Revolutions (1979)
2. Protecting Soldiers and Mothers (1992), on early U.S. social policy
3. The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism (2012)
4. President of the American Political Science Association
5. Born in Detroit, 1947; Michigan State University graduate (1969)