Gottdiener to Present Endowed Lecture at Yale University

BUFFALO, N.Y. -- Mark D. Gottdiener of Buffalo, professor in the Department of Sociology in the University at Buffalo's College of Arts and Sciences, will present the 2007 Roth and Symonds Endowed Lecture at the Yale School of Architecture on March 30.

His talk, "Foreground/Background: Architecture and the Culture of Theming," will be followed by a dinner in his honor.

The following day, the school will hold a mini-conference on themes related to Gottdiener's work in urbanism. Gottdiener is an internationally regarded scholar in the field of urban sociology and cultural studies, specializing in cultural semiotics and popular culture and how cultural issues are related to social problems.

In addition, his work in socio-spatial analysis has been an important contribution to the theory of urban sociology.

He is the award-winning author of many journal articles and of 16 notable books on such issues as the culture of air travel, the sociology of travel and tourism, the social development of Las Vegas and the origins, nature and future of themed environments in our information-overloaded world.

Among the best-known are "The Theming of America: Dreams, Visions and Commercial Spaces" and the textbook, "The New Urban Sociology," now in its third edition, which looks at urban regions and built environments from a postmodernist perspective, going beyond traditional social variables to examine economic and political dimensions of urban development and change.

In February 2006 Gottdiener was recognized by his peers in the Eastern Sociological Society with a special session devoted to his work at their annual conference.

He is in residence this semester at the Institute for Urban and Regional Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, on an endowed fellowship from the Lady Davis Fellowship Trust.