C. Wright Mills

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C. Wright Mills bigraphy, stories - American sociologist

C. Wright Mills : biography

August 28, 1916 – March 20, 1962

Charles Wright Mills (August 28, 1916 – March 20, 1962) was an American sociologist, and a professor of sociology at Columbia University from 1946 until his death in 1962. Mills was published widely in popular and intellectual journals, and is remembered for several books. Among them The Power Elite, which introduced that term and describes the relationships and class alliances among the U.S. political, military, and economic elites, White Collar, on the American middle class, and The Sociological Imagination, where Mills proposes the proper relationship in sociological scholarship between biography and history.

Mills was concerned with the responsibilities of intellectuals in post-World War II society, and advocated public and political engagement over uninterested observation. Mills biographer Daniel Geary writes that his writings had a "particularly significant impact on New Left social movements of the 1960s." By Daniel Geary, p. 1. In fact, Mills popularized the term "New Left" in the U.S. in a 1960 open letter, Letter to the New Left.

Biography

C. Wright Mills was born in Waco, Texas on August 28, 1916. His family moved constantly when he was growing up and as a result, he lived a relatively isolated life with limited continuous relationships. Mills graduated from Dallas Technical High School in 1934.Short biography of C. Wright Mills published in the Dictionary of Modern American Philosophers in 3 volumes by Thoemmes Press, Bristol, UK, 2004 He initially attended Texas A&M University but left after his first year and subsequently graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1939. By the time he graduated Mills had already been published in the two leading sociology journals in the U.S., the American Sociological Review and the American Journal of Sociology. By Irving Louis Horowitz, p. 40

While studying at Texas Mills met his first wife, Dorothy Helen Smith who was also a student there. After their marriage in 1937 Dorothy Helen, or "Freya," worked to support the couple while Mills completed his graduate work, and typed and copy edited much of his work including his Ph.D. dissertation.

Mills received his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1942. His dissertation was entitled "A Sociological Account of Pragmatism: An Essay on the Sociology of Knowledge." By C. Wright Mills, Kathryn Mills, Pamela Mills, Dan Wakefield, 2001, p. 77 Mills left Wisconsin in early 1942 upon being appointed professor of sociology at the University of Maryland, College Park.

In 1945, Mills moved to New York after securing a research associate position at Columbia University’s Bureau of Applied Social Research. Mills separated from Freya with the move, and the couple were divorced in 1947. Mills was appointed assistant professor in the university’s sociology department in 1946.

In the mid-1940s while still at Maryland, Mills began contributing ‘journalistic sociology’ and opinion pieces to intellectual journals such as The New Republic, The New Leader, and Politics, the journal established by Mills friend Dwight Macdonald in 1944. By Irving Louis Horowitz, pp. 67-71 (Accessed 4 December 2008)

1946 saw publication of From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology, a translation of essays by Weber co-authored with one of Mills’ mentors and friends at Wisconsin, Hans Gerth. By C. Wright Mills, Kathryn Mills, Pamela Mills, Dan Wakefield, 2001, p. 47 In 1953 the two published a second work, Character and Social Structure: The Psychology of Social Institutions. By C. Wright Mills, Kathryn Mills, Pamela Mills, Dan Wakefield, 2001, p. 93

In 1947 Mills married his second wife Ruth Harper, a Bureau of Applied Social Research statistician who worked with Mills on New Men of Power (1948), White Collar (1951), and The Power Elite (1956). Mills and Harper separated in 1957 and divorced in 1959.

Mills married his third wife, Yaroslava Surmach, an American artist of Ukrainian descent, in 1959. Mills had one child with each of his wives: Pamela (with Freya), Kathryn (with Ruth), and artist Nikolas (with Yaroslava).