Department of Sociology
University of California
Berkeley, CA 94720
Telephone: 510-643-1690
Fax: 510-642-0659
iasone@berkeley.edu
John Lie (pronounced "Lee") was born in South Korea, grew up in Japan and in Hawaii, and attended Harvard University where he received A.B. magna cum laude in Social Studies in 1982 and Ph.D. in Sociology in 1988. Currently he is Class of 1959 Professor and Dean of International and Area Studies at the University of California, Berkeley.
Taking literally C. Wright Mills's notion of the sociological imagination to study the intersection of biography, history, and social structure Lie's sociological imagination trilogy has explored his Korean origins and Korean diasporic trajectories. The trilogy includes Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots (co-authored, Harvard University Press, 1995), Han Unbound: The Political Economy of South Korea (Stanford University Press, 1998), and Multiethnic Japan (Harvard University Press, 2001).
Lie's primary intellectual focus is social theory. The more abstract articulation of the sociological imagination trilogy is Modern Peoplehood (Harvard University Press, 2004). He is currently working on a more systematic work, tentatively entitled The Consolation of Social Theory.
Lie has devoted considerable energy to undergraduate teaching and academic administration. His longstanding interest in pedagogy has culminated in an introductory textbook, Sociology: Your Compass for a New Century (co-authored, Wadsworth, 2003).
Before joining the Berkeley faculty, Lie was Head of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for five years, and directed the Center for Japanese Studies and the Korean Studies Program at the University of Michigan. In addition to Illinois and Michigan, he has taught at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Yonsei University (South Korea), University of Oregon, Keio University (Japan), National Taiwan University, University of Waikato (New Zealand), and Harvard University.
