Career
Isaac began his professorial career at
Florida State University in 1978 where he rose through the academic ranks to become the Mildred and
Claude Pepper Distinguished Professor. He joined the Sociology Department at
Vanderbilt University in 2004, where he is now the Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Distinguished Professor (endowed chair) of Sociology & Political Economy. Isaac has published extensively in the fields of
political sociology, political economy, social movements, labor studies, and historical processes of social change. He is known for his published work in three major areas: (i) political economy of labor movements and class formation processes; (ii) civil rights and black liberation movement dynamics; and (iii) methodological approaches to incorporating qualitative events and turning points into quantitative models of social-historical change. In recognition of his accomplishments in research, he was elected into the national honorary research society,
Sociological Research Association, in 2014. ==Partial bibliography==
Partial bibliography
• Isaac, Larry W., and William Kelly. 1981. “Racial Insurgency, the State, and Welfare Expansion.” American Journal of Sociology 86(6): pages 1348–1386. • Isaac, Larry W., and Larry Griffin. 1989. “Ahistoricism in Time-Series Analysis of Historical Process: Critique, Redirection, and Illustrations from U.S. Labor History.” American Sociological Review 54(6): pages 873–890. • Isaac, Larry W. 1997. “Transforming Localities: Reflections on Time, Causality, and Narrative in Contemporary Historical Sociology.” Historical Methods 30(4): pages 4–12. • Isaac, Larry W. 2002. “To Counter ‘the Very Devil’ and More: The Making of Independent Capitalist Militia in Gilded Age America.” American Journal of Sociology 108(2): pages 353-405. • Isaac, Larry W., and Lars Christiansen. 2002. "How the Civil Rights Movement Revitalized Labor Militancy." American Sociological Review 67(5): pages 722–746. • Isaac, Larry W., Steve McDonald, and Greg Lukasik. 2006. “Takin' it from the Streets: How the Sixties Mass Movement Revitalized Unionization.” American Journal of Sociology 112(1): pages 46–96. • Isaac, Larry W. 2008. “Movement of Movements: Culture Moves in the Long Civil Rights Struggle.” Social Forces 87(1): pages 33–63. • Isaac, Larry W. 2009. “Movements, Aesthetics, and Markets in Literary Change: Making the American Labor Problem Novel.” American Sociological Review 74(6): 938–965. • Isaac, Larry W., Jonathan S. Coley, Daniel B. Cornfield, and Dennis C. Dickerson. 2016. “Preparation Pathways and Movement Participation: Insurgent Schooling and Nonviolent Direct Action in the Nashville Civil Rights Movement.” Mobilization 21(2): pages 155–176. • Isaac, Larry W., Anna W. Jacobs, Jaime Kucinskas, and Allison R. McGrath. 2020. “Social Movement Schools: Sites for Consciousness Transformation, Training, and Prefigurative Social Development.” Social Movement Studies 19(2): pages 160–182. • Isaac, Larry W., Jonathan S. Coley, Daniel B. Cornfield, and Dennis C. Dickerson. 2020. “Pathways to Modes of Movement Participation: Micromobilization in the Nashville Civil Rights Movement.” Social Forces 99(1): pages 255–280. • Isaac, Larry W., Rachel G. McKane, and Anna W. Jacobs. 2022. “Pitting the Working-Class Against Itself: Solidarity, Strikebreaking, and Strike Outcomes in the Early U.S. Labor Movement.” Social Science History 46(2): pages 315–348. • Isaac, Larry W., Jonathan S. Coley, Quan D. Mai, and Anna W. Jacobs. 2022. “Striking News: Discursive Power of the Press as Capitalist Resource in Gilded Age Strikes.” American Journal of Sociology 127(5): pages 1602–1663. ==References==