John Torpey is Professor of Sociology at the Graduate Center. He is the author or editor of several books, including Making Whole What has Been Smashed: On Reparations Politics, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006; Old Europe, New Europe, Core Europe: Transatlantic Relations after the Iraq War (edited with Daniel Levy and Max Pensky; London and New York: Verso, 2005); Politics and the Past: On Repairing Historical Injustices (ed.), Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003; Documenting Individual Identity: The Development of State Practices in the Modern World (co-edited with Jane Caplan), Princeton University Press, 2001; The Invention of the Passport: Surveillance, Citizenship, and the State, Cambridge University Press, 2000; and Intellectuals, Socialism, and Dissent: The East German Opposition and its Legacy, Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1995. His interests lie broadly in the area of comparative historical sociology and his current research focuses on the problem of “American exceptionalism”.
