Thomas DeGloma
Associate Professor of Sociology, Hunter College and the CUNY Graduate Center

Thomas DeGloma received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Rutgers University. He specializes in the areas of culture, cognition, memory, symbolic interaction, and sociological theory. His research interests also include the sociology of time, knowledge, autobiography, identity, and trauma. Professor DeGloma’s book, Seeing the Light: The Social Logic of Personal Discovery (University of Chicago Press), explores the stories people tell about life-changing discoveries of “truth” and illuminates the ways that individuals and communities use autobiographical stories to weigh in on salient moral and political controversies. This book received the 2015 Charles Horton Cooley Book Award from the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction. Professor DeGloma has also published articles in Social Psychology Quarterly, Symbolic Interaction, Sociological Forum, and the American Journal of Cultural Sociology, along with several chapters in various edited volumes. He is currently working on his second book, which explores the phenomenon of anonymity and the impact of anonymous actors in various social situations and interactions. Professor DeGloma teaches courses on cognitive sociology/social memory studies, interpersonal behavior (microsociology/symbolic interaction), and classical and contemporary sociological theory. He is currently serving as Secretary of the Eastern Sociological Society and will serve as President of the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction for the 2017-2018 term.

• DeGloma, Thomas and Max Papadatonakis. Forthcoming. “The Thematic Lens: A Formal and Cultural Framework for Comparative Ethnographic Analysis.” Beyond the Case: Competing Logics and Approaches to Comparative Ethnography. Edited by Corey M. Abramson and Neil Gong. New York: Oxford University Press.
• DeGloma, Thomas and Erin F. Johnston. Forthcoming. “Cognitive Migrations: A Cultural and Cognitive Sociology of Personal Transformation.” Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Sociology. Edited by Wayne H. Brekhus and Gabe Ignatow. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.
• DeGloma, Thomas. 2015. “The Strategies of Mnemonic Battle: On the Alignment of Autobiographical and Collective Memories in Conflicts over the Past.” American Journal of Cultural Sociology 3, 1: 156-190.
• DeGloma, Thomas. 2014a. Seeing the Light: The Social Logic of Personal Discovery. Chicago, Illinois: University of Chicago Press.
• DeGloma, Thomas. 2014b. “The Unconscious in Cultural Dispute: On the Ethics of Psychosocial Discovery.” Pp. 77-98 in The Unhappy Divorce of Psychoanalysis and Sociology: Diverse Perspectives on the Psychosocial . Lynn Chancer and John Andrews (eds). London: Palgrave Macmillan.