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Chandra Mukerji

Professor Emerita of Communication and Science Studies, Affiliated Faculty, Critical Gender Studies

Mukerji is primarily concerned with the material aspects of human cultures and communication processes -- from built environments to popular cultural artifacts. She has studied garden history and military history, particularly in 17th-century France, as ways to understand engineering and state power. She has also studied the culture of childhood, and the history of American film to try to make better sense of how categories and material life are connected (or not) through multiple cultural genealogies. Finally, she is using theories of distributed cognition to connect the material world to cultural patterns of thought.

Ph.D. in Sociology, Northwestern University (1968)

  • Mukerji, Chandra, Cartography, Entrepreneurialism and Power in Pamela Smith and Paula Findlen, Merchants and Marvels (Cambridge University Press).
  • Mukerji, Chandra and Tarleton Gillespie, Recognizable Ambiguity: Cartoon Imagery and American Childhood in Animaniacs, in Daniel Cook (ed.),
  • Symbolic Childhood (Peter Lang Publisher).
  • Mukerji, Chandra, Territorial Ambitions and the Gardens of Versailles. Cambridge University Press. 1997.
  • Mukerji, Chandra, Rethinking Popular Culture. Co-edited with Michael Schudson. University California Press, 1990.
  • Mukerji, Chandra, A Fragile Power. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990.
  • Mukerji, Chandra, From Graven Images: Patterns of Modern Materialism. New York: Columbia University Press, 1983.
  • Mukerji, Chandra, "Stewardship politics and the control of wild weather," a reflection on levees, seawalls, and political legitimacy in a historical perspective, published as part of a special issue on Hurricane Katrina in Social Studies of Science 37, Feb. 2007
  • Mukerji, Chandra, "Cultural Genealogy: Method for as Cultural Sociology of History or Historical Sociology of Culture," appeared in the first issue of a new Sage journal, Cultural Sociology, 2007.
  • Mukerji, Chandra, "The Great Forest Survey of 1669-1671: The Use of Archives for Political Reform" appeared in Social Studies of Science 37, April 2007.
  • Mukerji, Chandra and Gillespie, Tarleton, "Recognizable Ambiguity: Cartoon Imagery and American Childhood in Animaniacs." in Dan Cook, ed. Symbolic Childhood (forthcoming, Peter Lang Publishers, 2001)
  • Mukerji, Chandra, "Animals, Monsters, and Muppets" in Elizabeth Long, Cultural Studies and the Sociology of Culture. Blackwell, 1997.
  • Mukerji, Chandra. "Shakespeare in L.A.: A Commentary" Litteraria Pragensia Vol. 6, No. 12, pp. 13-25. 1996.
  • Mukerji, Chandra."The Collective Construction of Scientific Genius" in a collection on Work and Communication, edited by Y. Engeström and David Middleton. Cambridge University Press. 1997.