The Cultural Sociological Imagination, Volume I The Intersection of Culture, Structure, and Personality

Dr. Celso M. Villegas is NEH Distinguished Teaching Professor of Sociology at Kenyon College. He studies middle-class formation and democracy, charisma and cultural performance, and civil sphere theory around the world. Among his recently published articles are “ The Civil Sphere and Social Class” in in the journal Cultural Sociology (2023) and “The Drama Surrounding Intellectuals” in Dramatic Intellectuals (2025). He curates the Alexander Papers at Kenyon College.

Dr. Galen Watts is Assistant Professor in the department of sociology and legal studies at the University of Waterloo. His research concerns cultural and institutional change in liberal democracies since the 1960s—with a focus on the spheres of religion, science, morality, work, and politics. His first book, The Spiritual Turn: The Religion of the Heart and the Making of Romantic Liberal Modernity , published by Oxford University Press, won the 2023 Society for the Scientific Study of Religion’s Distinguished Book Award. And in 2026, he won the Canadian Sociological Association’s Early Investigator Award.