Kathleen Blee, PhD

  • Distinguished Professor

My areas of interest are social movements, especially racist/anti-Semitic, and far-right movements in the U.S. and Europe, racial violence, and microsociology. I currently have two research projects: with Pete Simi and Matthew DeMichele, I am collecting data and beginning analysis in a funded prospective interview-based study of white supremacist activists to understand whether and how they separate from racist ideologies and activities over a 5 year period.  I am also working on a project on spatial and cultural precipitators of social interaction, based on a year-long ethnography of urban bus riding.

Education & Training

  • PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1982
  • MS, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1976
  • BA, Indiana University, 1974

Representative Publications

2024. Out of Hiding: Extremist White Supremacism and How It Can Be Stopped. With Robert Futrell and Pete Simi. Routledge

2018. Understanding Racist Activism: Theory, Methods, and Research. Routledge.

2012 Democracy in the Making: How Activist Groups Form. Oxford University Press.

2012 Women of the Right: International and Transnational Perspectives, co-edited with Sandra D. Deutsch. Penn State University Press.

2002 Inside Organized Racism: Women and Men in the Hate Movement. University of California Press.

2001 Feminism and Anti-Racism: Transnational Struggles for Justice. Edited with France Winddance Twine. New York University Press.

2000 The Road to Poverty: The Making of Wealth and Hardship in Appalachia. (with Dwight Billings). Cambridge University Press.

1998 No Middle Ground: Women & Radical Protest. Editor. New York University Press.

1991 Women of The Klan: Racism and Gender in the 1920s. University of California Press.

Research Interests

  • Gender
  • Race and racism
  • Social movements
  • Sociology of space and place

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