Bio
Dan Krier (PhD University of Kansas) specializes in social theory and political economy. Dan writes in the traditions of critical and continental social theory with an emphasis upon Weber’s historical/comparative methodology. Dan’s books include:
- Speculative Management: Stock Market Power and Corporate Change (SUNY, 2005) on speculative financial markets and their impact upon the productive economy.
- NASCAR, Sturgis and the New Economy of Spectacle (Brill, 2017; Haymarket 2018), with William Swart, on spectator events as an engine of economic development.
- Capitalism’s Future: Alienation, Emancipation and Critique (Brill, 2016; Haymarket 2018), with Mark Worrell, on capitalism and critical social theory.
- The Social Ontology of Capitalism (Palgrave MacMillan, 2017), with Mark Worrell, on the ontological foundations of capitalism, especially in interdisciplinary Marxism.
- Capital in the Mirror: Critical Social Theory and the Aesthetic Dimension (SUNY, Forthcoming), with Mark Worrell, on reflections of capitalism in literature, photography, and film.
Dan co-organized and hosted the 2016 International Social Theory Consortium (ISTC) in Ames and organizes an ongoing series of Symposia on New Directions in Critical Social Theory that bring sociologists, philosophers, cultural theorists and political scientists to Iowa State University for intense, focused exchange of ideas. Articles by Dan on critical social theory and political economy have been published in Critical Sociology, Current Perspectives in Social Theory, American Journal of Economics and Sociology, Fast Capitalism, Continental Thought & Theory, Logos, Journal of Rural Social Sciences, and The Sociological Quarterly. Most recently, Dan published “Political Moderation and Polarization in the Heartland: Economics, Rurality, and Social Identity in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election,” in The Sociological Quarterly with colleagues in the Department of Sociology Ann Oberhauser and Abdi Kusow.
Dan has received numerous teaching awards, including the Early Achievement in Teaching Award (2006) from the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Department of Sociology’s Bogardus Award (2006), the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Introductory Teaching Award (2015) and was named the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Shakeshaft Master Teacher in Humanities and Social Sciences (2015). Dan teaches a variety of courses from large-enrollment introductory sections to distance learning courses that generate department revenue to theory courses required by graduate and undergraduate students. During his time at ISU, Dan has received course improvement grants from LAS-CAC and the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching. Dan served on the advisory board of ISU’s Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching, ISU’s faculty senate, and was chair of the LAS representative assembly.
In the Spring of 2019, Dan was on research leave writing a book that develops an integrated theory of economic theology, based upon his 2017 article in Continental Thought & Theory, “Debt, Value and Economic Theology” (Continental Thought & Theory, 2017).