David Riesman '31, who will join the Faculty next year as the first Ford Professor, will probably become an associate of Quincy House, it was learned last night. It was stressed, however, that until the Corporation votes on the staff of the eighth house, no official announcement will be forthcoming.
The sociologist is reported to have expressed great interest in helping to make Quincy House a new center of intellectual activity. This would be in keeping with the Ford Professorship which was established to provide distinguished men from different fields of knowledge to enrich the academic life in the College.
In his first year here, Riesman will teach only one half-course, a Spring term, upper-level Soc. Sci. entitled "Character and Culture in America." In the Fall, he plans to finish up research projects he is now working on at the University of Chicago.
Tentative Outline Given
Six main topics will comprise the work of the course, according to Riesman's tentative outline. They are historical methodology, the Midwest as a force, individual communities, political figures that have dominated their eras, institutional processes, and what Riesman calls "the American style."
The outline lists as sub-topics suburbia, religious and ethnic groups, worker-manager relationships in factories, and the American "elite."
When his appointment to the Faculty was announced last Spring, Riesman expressed a desire to give a course in "the sociology of psychotherapy," but this will not be offered next year.
Riesman, formerly a lawyer, is the author of The Lonely Crowd, Individualism Reconsidered, Faces in the Crowd. and Medicine in Modern Society.
Some time in the early Fall, the complete staff of Quincy House will probably be announced, John M. Bullitt '43, master of the House, said last night.
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