Matt Wray is an associate professor of sociology at Temple University. He is the author of Not Quite White: White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness (Duke University Press, 2006) and editor of Cultural Sociology: An Introductory Reader (Norton, 2014). He is currently working on a book about self-destruction in the American suicide belt to be published by Oxford University Press.
Matt Wray
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Writing on Public Books
American Perceptions of Class
When, in 1906, the German sociologist Werner Sombart quipped that in America, “all socialist utopias came to nothing on roast beef and apple pie,” he offered a …
Trump Syllabus 3.0
This course explores one of the most unanticipated events in modern political history: the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States of America. We ask three basic questions: How did Trump win? Where (and whom) did he win? And why did he win? We devote equal time to each of these […]
Trump Syllabus 3.0
This course explores one of the most unanticipated events in modern political history: the election of Donald Trump to the presidency of the United States of America. We ask three basic questions: How did Trump win? Where …
Close to the Bone: An Interview with Filmmaker Debra Granik
Debra Granik is the director and co-writer of Winter’s Bone, which was nominated for four Oscars including Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. Her latest film, the documentary Stray Dog, follows the everyday life of a Vietnam veteran. A. O. Scott called it an “implicit challenge to the lazy habit of looking at American life […]
Race: Past, Present, and Future Tense
“White culture has been on the fritz lately and I’m not sure it is coming back.” So wrote one of my undergraduate students on her final exam a few years back. I remember laughing out loud at the time, but her pithy sentence stuck with me. Somehow, that image of white culture as a broken-down […]
