From dbh at Colorado.EDU Mon Nov 17 15:47:53 2025 From: dbh at Colorado.EDU (David Boromisza-Habashi) Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2025 15:47:53 +0000 Subject: [Ethnocomm] =?utf-8?q?FW=3A_Wendy_Leeds-Hurwitz_on_her_book=2C_M?= =?utf-8?q?apping_Goffman=E2=80=99s_Invisible_College?= In-Reply-To: <98863183.7179.0@wordpress.com> References: <98863183.7179.0@wordpress.com> Message-ID: Hi Ethnocommers, Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz was recently interviewed by Erving Goffman?s ghost about her book Mapping Goffman?s Invisible College. What an honor, Wendy! ? DBH From: CaMP Anthropology Sent: Monday, November 17, 2025 7:10 AM To: David Boromisza-Habashi Subject: Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz on her book, Mapping Goffman?s Invisible College [External email - use caution] https://www.mediastudies.press/pub/nb-mapping-goffman Interview by Erving Goffman?s ghost, on the assumption that he would have had opinions about this research Erving Goffman: Why, when I stated multiple times during my life that the goal w? Read on blog or Reader [Site logo image] CaMP Anthropology Read on blog or Reader Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz on her book, Mapping Goffman?s Invisible College [https://0.gravatar.com/avatar/60f6fc85bc7e11484a59c96e2f947ebb2ab9f858a43bd80ac930cf0073470b3e?s=96&d=identicon&r=G] By | on November 17, 2025 [https://campanthropology.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/11/image.png?w=640] https://www.mediastudies.press/pub/nb-mapping-goffman Interview by Erving Goffman?s ghost, on the assumption that he would have had opinions about this research Erving Goffman: Why, when I stated multiple times during my life that the goal was to study sociology and not sociologists, did you even write this book? Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz: I should clarify at the start that I did not set out to write this book. In fact, my goal was not to study your life so much as your ideas. Lots of others have written about your ideas (and your life), but there has been surprisingly little concern about the context within which those ideas were developed. I have previously published on several aspects of disciplinary history, including on ?The role of theory groups in the lives of ideas.? So, it made sense to me to sort out more than had been written previously about the invisible college you built. And, of course, once I started, the project just grew. Originally, I was asked to present a paper in honor of the 100th anniversary of your birth; once that was published in Portuguese, I wanted an English version to publish as well. The original presentation was short, including only a few projects, and focusing on a few colleagues, all based at the University of Pennsylvania. But once I got started, I kept learning more, both about other projects at Penn, involving a much larger number of colleagues across many disciplines, and also about projects in which you had been involved before or concurrent with your time at Penn. Erving Goffman: How, given that I did not deposit my papers anywhere, did you even do this research? Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz: First, I was a graduate student at Penn across the years you were based there and so knew some things that were not generally discussed or written about by others. That was enough to get me started. Second, even though you did not donate your papers to any archive, many of your colleagues did. Just to list a few examples: Dell Hymes, Virginia Hymes, Sol Worth, Ward Goodenough, Anthony Wallace, and Henry Glassie, all of whom overlapped with you at Penn; Allen Grimshaw, Thomas Sebeok, and Richard Bauman at Indiana; Alan Dundes at Berkeley; Everett Hughes and David Schneider at Chicago. And these days, it is quite easy to use digital guides posted online to discover what archive has what materials. In addition, several people have published details about what was happening in projects that involved you, such as John Szwed in writing about the Center for Urban Ethnography, when he described the way in which you helped him write up the original grant proposal. And, in a few cases, I conducted interviews to clarify details that were not described elsewhere. Erving Goffman: Given that you did all this research, what did you actually learn? Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz: Well, I learned some things about you, as well as some things about Penn, invisible colleges, multi- vs. interdisciplinarity, and disciplinary history generally. About you: I had not known the role you played in early sociolinguistics, even though I thought I knew something about that topic. I never would have named you as a sociolinguist before this research, but you were ?in the room? for multiple critical early steps in the development of that research strand. I learned about the surprisingly large group of people with whom you collaborated in various ways over decades, and the ways in which people who are not generally recognized as a theory group (or even overlapping theory groups) worked together, not once, but on a series of projects, some more and some less successful. While the fact that theory groups need both intellectual and organizational leadership had been pointed out previously by others, your frequent role as what you labeled a ?carper? (what others more typically call a respondent), had not been documented. Your ability to synthesize what had been learned as the result of a conference, and to outline the next steps, was impressive, and shows up a surprising number of times. Again, this was not something previously noted by prior authors. It did, however, show a way to help move ideas along significantly without being the organizer of an event (although you also played that role far more often than previously acknowledged.) You looked beyond disciplinary boundaries for the best and the brightest stars ? and they were all happy to work with you. More generally: I learned not only something about invisible colleges (especially the ways in which they can be built up gradually, with overlapping sets of members engaging in multiple projects) but also about the differences between multi- and interdisciplinary projects. I was surprised by the fact that more of the latter were successful than the former (something meriting further study in other contexts). About Penn: I knew that Penn was a wonderful graduate school for me, but through this project I discovered just how much the administration explicitly encouraged interdisciplinarity, both for faculty members and students. And just how successful some of the projects they supported turned out to be. The scholars who participated in the projects described in the book were willing to ask questions beyond the obvious topics for the disciplines in which they had been trained, and/or into which they had been hired. About failure: As one of the projects described in detail (the Multiple Analysis Project, or MAP, sponsored by Grimshaw at Indiana, not someone at Penn) failed in most ways ? eventually completed, it took decades and by the time it was published, no one cared ? that serves as a fascinating example of just how much we can learn from failure. The implication is that we ought to study failure more often ? if nothing else, it might be a way to ensure more successes. About disciplinary history: I had used archives previously, but this project reiterated how important it is to look at contemporary documentation rather than making assumptions or accepting received wisdom. It is only when all the pieces are put together?publications and unpublished reports, agendas and meeting minutes, interviews and correspondence?that the full story is most likely to be understood. Finally, the project reiterated for me that ideas do not stand on their own. They cannot be generated, discussed, or transmitted except through the agency of not one but multiple people. Even brilliant ideas, even yours. Erving Goffman: Granted you have learned some things. But who will care? Who will make the time to read it, and why should they bother? Wendy Leeds-Hurwitz: It is absolutely true that an astonishing number of books about you and your work already have been published at this point, so perhaps it is unlikely anyone will want to read yet another. Yet perhaps the fact that your story so clearly demonstrates how invisible colleges work, and how interdisciplinarity works, and how ideas are shared and expanded through a network of scholars, will be what convinces people to make time for it. For me, better understanding why we study the things we do, in the ways we take for granted, explains much of why I make time to study disciplinary history. Comment [https://wordpress.com/i/emails/wpcom-notifications/icon-tip.png] You can also reply to this email to leave a comment. CaMP Anthropology ? 2025. Unsubscribe or manage your email subscriptions. [WordPress.com and Jetpack Logos] Get the Jetpack app Subscribe, bookmark, and get real?time notifications - all from one app! [Download Jetpack on Google Play] [Download Jetpack from the App Store] [WordPress.com Logo and Wordmark title=] Automattic, Inc. 60 29th St. #343, San Francisco, CA 94110 -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: