Duncombe, Stephen

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Duncombe, Stephen

PERSONAL:

Male. Education: State University ofNew York at Purchase, 1988, B.A. (cum laude); City University of New York, M.Phil., 1993, Ph.D. (with distinction), 1996.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Gallatin School, New York University, 715 Broadway, 5th Fl., New York, NY 10003. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

New School, New York, NY, instructor in master of arts in media studies, 1992-94; State University of New York at Old Westbury, assistant professor in American Studies and media and mass communications, 1994-99; New York University, Gallatin School, New York, NY, assistant professor, 1999-2003, associate professor of sociology, 2003—, associated faculty in department of culture and communications, 2005—. Host of Blows against the Empire on pirate radio station Steal This Radio, 1997-99; advisor for radio show This American Life,1998-2000; advisor for art exhibits. Active member in various political organizations and causes, including the Community Labor Coalition, More Gardens!, Charas/El Bohio Community Center, Good Jobs New York, Billionaires for Bush or Gore/United for a Fair Economy, CISPES, ACT UP!, UNITE! Local 169, JFREJ, Nicaragua Solidarity Network, Mexican American Workers Association, and United for Peace and Justice.

MEMBER:

Lower East Side Collective

AWARDS, HONORS:

President's Award in the Division of Social Sciences, State University of New Yorkat Purchase, 1988; University Fellowships, City University of New York, 1988-89, 1992; Jacob K. Javits fellowship, U.S. Department of Education, 1989-93; Bensman Award, 1993, for dissertation proposal; Joseph Monticciolo Fellowship for Studies in Community and Technology, 1993-94; Presidential Faculty Development Grants, State University of New York at Old Westbury, 1994, 1995; Chancellor's Award for Excellence in Teaching, State University of New York, 1998; Service Learning Course Development Grant, New York University, 2000.

WRITINGS:

Notes from Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternative Culture, Verso (New York, NY), 1997.

(Compiler) Cultural Resistance Reader, Verso (New York, NY), 2002.

(With Andrew Mattson) The Bobbed Haired Bandit: A True Story of Crime and Celebrity in 1920s New York, New York University Press (New York, NY), 2006.

Dream: Re-imagining Progressive Politics in an Age of Fantasy, New Press (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to books, including Dual City: The Restructuring of New York, edited by John H. Mollenkopf and Manuel Castells, Russell Sage, 1991; The Culture of Cities, by Sharon Zukin, Basil Blackwell, 1995; Sex, Scams and Street Life: The Sociology of New York City's Times Square, edited by Robert McNamara, Praeger, 1995; Alternative Library Literature,edited by Sanford Berman and James P. Danky, McFarland, 1996; The Encyclopedia of Third Parties,edited by Emmanuel Ness, Jim Ciment, and Ron Hayduk, M.E. Sharp, 1999; The Encyclopedia of Popular Culture, edited by Tom Pendergast and Sara Pendergast, St. James Press, 1999; Encyclopedia of Advertising, Fitzroy Dearborn/Museum of Broadcast Publishers, 2002; From ACT UP to the WTO: Urban Protest and Community Building in the Era of Globalization,edited by Ben Shepard and Ron Hayduk, Verso, 2002;The Zine Yearbook, edited by Jen Angel and Jason Kucsma, Soft Skull Press, 2003; The New Dictionary of the History of Ideas, Scribner, 2005; and The Encyclopedia of Sociology, Blackwell, 2006. Contributor to periodicals, including Harper's, Berkeley Journal of Sociology, Baffler, Dollars and Sense, Request, New York Newsday, Z, Activist, Other, Radical Society, Pugwash, Journal of Aesthetics and Protest, Brooklyn Rail, and the New York Times.

SIDELIGHTS:

Sociology professor Stephen Duncombe has garnered considerable critical attention for his 2006 book The Bobbed Haired Bandit: A True Story of Crime and Celebrity in 1920s New York,written with Andrew Mattson. It is a detailed account of the true-crime story of Celia Cooney, who was better known in the 1920s as "the Bobbed Haired Bandit." When Cooney found herself pregnant with a child she could not support financially, she embarked on a spree of robberies that became newspaper headlines across the country. Sporting a seal-skin coat and the short haircut that was emblematic of flappers and liberated women at the time, Cooney became both famed as a kind of antihero for the poor, and reviled by those who saw her as a dangerous upstart woman. Eventually, she was captured by police, and when her tragic story of poverty and an awful childhood came out, many were sympathetic to her and saw her case as clear evidence of the failures of American society. Praising the authors' combination of solid research and "readability," Booklist contributor Mike Tribby labeled The Bobbed Haired Bandit "a win-win package for true-crime, Roaring-Twenties, and pop-culture fans alike." A writer for Publishers Weekly similarly declared it "an absolute winner."