Ronald Berger, Professor

Office location: Laurentide 2104
Phone: (262) 472-1407
Email: bergerr@uww.edu

Ronald J. Berger (Ph.D., UCLA) is Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he teaches courses in disability studies, Holocaust studies, criminology, and white-collar crime. Born and raised in Los Angeles, California, he has lived in Wisconsin since 1981. 

Dr. Berger has published 15 books, including: Introducing Disability Studies; The Holocaust, Religion, and the Politics of Collective Memory: Beyond Sociology; Surviving the Holocaust: A Life Course Perspective; White-Collar Crime: The Abuse of Corporate and Government Power; Hoop Dreams on Wheels: Disability and the Competitive Wheelchair Athlete; Wheelchair Warrior: Gangs, Disability, and Basketball (with Melvin Juette); Storytelling Sociology: Narrative as Social Inquiry (with Richard Quinney); Crime, Justice, and Society: An Introduction to Criminology (with Marvin Free and Patricia Searles); Juvenile Delinquency and Justice: Sociological Perspectives (with Paul Gregory); Fathoming the Holocaust: A Social Problems Approach; and Rape and Society: Readings on the Problem of Sexual Assault (with Patricia Searles).

Dr. Berger also has published nearly 50 articles and book chapters, which have appeared in Contexts, Criminal Justice Review, Disability Studies Quarterly, Gender and Society, Humanity and Society, International Review of Qualitative Research, Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Law and Society Review, Perspectives on Social Problems, Qualitative Inquiry, Social Science Quarterly, Sociological Focus, Sociological Quarterly, and Studies in Symbolic Interaction, among other professional venues.

Dr. Berger has received UW-Whitewater’s highest awards for both teaching and research, as well as the Chancellor’s Award for service to students with disabilities and the Wisconsin Sociological Association’s William H. Sewell Outstanding Scholarship Award. He is a former editor of Sociological Imagination, the journal of the Wisconsin Sociological Association, and currently serves as an associate editor for Contexts and the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, as well as the consulting editor for the Disability in Society book series with Lynne Rienner Publishers.

Dr. Berger gave the keynote address at the Legacies of the Holocaust conference in Krakow, Poland (2009); and the Holocaust Memorial Yom Hashoah Lecture sponsored by the Center for Holocaust Studies at the University of Vermont (2011). He has also co-written a dramatic screenplay, “The Promise” (with Walter Ulbricht), based on the true story of his father and uncle’s Holocaust survival, which won a first-place award in the Venice Arts Screenwriting Competition and second-place awards in the American Screenwriters Association Competition  and the Wisconsin Screenwriters Forum Contest.