Current Projects (as of September 2009)

Spent a good chunk of time this summer out in Shanksville, PA (about three hours from Lewisburg) at the site of the temporary memorial for United Flight 93 and at the Flight 93 Memorial Chapel. Was also out there for the annual commemorative events on Sept. 11, 2009. I hope to produce a book on Flight 93 memorialization in the next year or so.

Bucknell was kind enough to do a story on the research I'm doing, with a short video in which I appear wearing unfashionably large sunglasses. The Somerset, PA Daily American did a short story on my Flight 93 work last November, and two Pittsburgh papers, the Post-Gazette and the Tribune-Review, just did stories leading into the annual ceremonies in Shanksville for September 2009.

Saints, Heroes, Myths, and Rites: Six Durkheimian Studies, a collection of English translations of several important essays by members of the Année sociologique group around Emile Durkheim, is now available.

Godless Intellectuals? will (finally) be published in April of next year.

Other books I've had something to do with:

Philip Smith did the first edition (in 2001) by himself and kindly asked me to come on board as his co-author for this updated and expanded edition.

I did the textual notes to this latest translation of Durkheim's classic study, On Suicide.

This is a collection of letters written by sociologist/philosopher/political activist Robert Hertz to his wife Alice (who was herself an important figure in the reform of the elementary educational system in France in the early 20th century), from the front during WWI, where Hertz died heroically in April 1915; Philippe Besnard and I edited and introduced it.