David Wagner
Office
Summer 2012
By appointmentContact Information
I hold a Bachelors degree in History and a Masters degree in Social Work from Columbia University, a Labor Studies Masters degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and a Ph.d. in Sociology from the City University of New York. I have worked as a social worker, an organizer. I helped form the low income group P.O.W.E.R. (Portland Organizing to Win Economic Rights) in 2001 and work with LACAN (Los Angeles Community Action Network) in community organizing in Skid Row Los Angeles. I have recently been active in a new group to assist prisoners in Maine called Prisoners Release Project (PREP).
Research Interests
I have written widely in the fields of poverty and inequality, social and political change, and social welfare history. My six books include: Checkerboard Square, which won the 1993 C. Wright Mills award, The New Temperance: The American Obsession with Sin and Vice which won the 1998 Northeast Popular Culture Award, What's Love Got to Do With It? A Critical Look At American Charity, The Poorhouse: America's Forgotten Institution, and Ordinary People.
I am currently working on three books:
1. The Rise and Fall of Homelessness as a Social Issue 1879-2009 with Jennifer (Barton) Gilman
2. The Miracle Worker and the Transcendentalist: Anne Sullivan, Franklin Sanborn, and the Education of Helen Keller
3. From Poverty to Fame: Poor People Who Made History and What We Can Learn From Them
Recent Publications
I will have two books published in the 2011-12 academic year. "The Miracle Worker and the Transcendentalist" a new look at the lives of Anne Sullivan and Helen Keller, will be published by Paradigm Publishers in October 2011. Another book entitled "The Rise and Fall of Homelessness as a Social Problem" with Jenn Barton Gilman will be published by Lynn Reiner Publishers in 2012.
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