Core Department Faculty Member

Professor Zerubavel is Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of Sociology, Emeritus. His main areas of interest are cognitive sociology and the sociology of time. His latest six books explored the sociomental shape of the past, the social organization of silence and denial, the social construction of genealogical relatedness, the sociology of inattention, the phenomenology and semiotics of taken-for-grantedness, and the notion of a concept-driven sociology.

His publications include Patterns of Time in Hospital Life: A Sociological Perspective (University of Chicago Press, 1979); Hidden Rhythms: Schedules and Calendars in Social Life (University of Chicago Press, 1981. Paperback – University of California Press, 1985. Japanese – 1984. Italian – 1985); The Seven-Day Circle: The History and Meaning of the Week (Free Press, 1985. Paperback – University of Chicago Press, 1989. Listed among Choice's Outstanding Academic Books – 1985); The Fine Line: Making Distinctions in Everyday Life (Free Press, 1991. Paperback – University of Chicago Press, 1993); Terra Cognita: The Mental Discovery of America (Rutgers University Press, 1992. Transaction – 2003); Social Mindscapes: An Invitation to Cognitive Sociology (Harvard University Press, 1997. Paperback – 1999. Norwegian – 2000. Persian – 2021); The Clockwork Muse: A Practical Guide to Writing Theses, Dissertations, and Books (Harvard University Press, 1999. Marathi – 2012); Time Maps: Collective Memory and the Social Shape of the Past (University of Chicago Press, 2003. Paperback – 2004. Italian – 2005); The Elephant in the Room: Silence and Denial in Everyday Life (Oxford University Press, 2006. Paperback – 2007. Chinese – 2008); Ancestors and Relatives: Genealogy, Identity, and Community (Oxford University Press, 2011. Paperback – 2013. Awarded Honorable mention in the 2012 PROSE Award ["Sociology and Social Work" category] by the Association of American Publishers); Hidden in Plain Sight: The Social Structure of Irrelevance (Oxford University Press, 2015); Taken for Granted: The Remarkable Power of the Unremarkable (Princeton University Press, 2018. Italian – 2019. Awarded the Charles Horton Cooley Award for Best Book by the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction as well as the Susanne K. Langer Award for Outstanding Scholarship in the Ecology of Symbolic Form by the Media Ecology Association – 2019); and Generally Speaking: An Invitation to Concept-Driven Sociology (Oxford University Press, 2021) , and Don't Take It Personally: Personalness and Impersonality in Social Life (Oxford University Press, 2024).

He is currently writing a book on impersonality in social life. Professor Zerubavel served from 1992 to 2001 and from 2006 to 2009 as the director of the Rutgers sociology graduate program. In 2000-01 he served as Chair of the Culture Section of the American Sociological Association. In 2003 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. In 2016 he received the Rutgers University Faculty Scholar-Teacher Award, and in 2017 he received the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction’s Helena Lopata Mentor Excellence Award. He teaches graduate courses in cognitive sociology, time and memory, and sociological theory. In 2022 he was awarded the Society for the Study of Social Interaction’s George Herbert Mead Lifetime Achievement Award.