Assistant Professor of Sociology
Department of Sociology
University of Memphis
Clement Hall, Room 305
Memphis TN 38152

Phone: (901) 678-3031
Fax: (901) 678-2525
Email: seth.abrutyn@memphis.edu

Dr. Seth Abrutyn is currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology. He received his Ph.D. from the University of California-Riverside in 2009 and was a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Institute for Research on World-Systems at UC Riverside from 2009 to the spring of 2011. His areas of interest include General Sociological Theory, Human Social Institutions, the Sociology of Religion, Evolutionary Sociology, and Historical-Comparative Sociology.

Dr. Abrutyn's current efforts are directed towards (1) examining and explaining the emergent dynamics and properties of macro-institutional domains, (2) linking meso-level (or organizational level) forces with macro-structural changes, and (3) producing a synthetic, explanatory theory of sociocultural evolution. His recent work has appeared in Social Forces, Sociological Theory, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, and Sociological Perspectives.

Besides these larger theoretical issues, Dr. Abrutyn is interested in the contemporary American Jewish community and the assimilatory pressures it faces from the broader civil society, how religious identities are constructed, maintained, adjusted, and lost, and finally, the way religion and polity complement and contradict each other in U.S. society.

Dr. Abrutyn is teaching a graduate seminar this fall, Globalization and Social Change, and an undergraduate course in the spring: Contemporary Sociological Theories. He previously taught Social Psychology, Human Social Institutions, Human Societies, Sociology of Religion, Sociology of Education, Sociology of the Family, and Socialization and Personality.