David Wagner, PhD, MSW

Professor Wagner is a Professor of Social Work and Sociology. He holds a Bachelors degree in History and a Masters degree in Social Work from Columbia University, a Labor Studies Masters degree from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, and a Ph.d. in Sociology from the City University of New York. Dave worked as a social worker, an organizer, and a labor official. He helped form the low income group P.O.W.E.R. (Portland Organizing to Win Economic Rights) in 2001, and recently worked with LACAN (Los Angeles Community Action Network) in community organizing in Skid Row Los Angeles. Dave has written widely in the fields of poverty and inequality, social and political change, and social welfare history. His six books include: Checkerboard Square, which won the 1993 C. Wright Mills award, The New Temperance: The American Obsession with Sin and Vice which won the 1998 Northeast Popular Culture Award, What's Love Got to Do With It? A Critical Look At American Charity, The Poorhouse: America's Forgotten Institution, and Ordinary People. He is currently working on two books: The Irish Pauper and the Boston Brahmin about the intertwined lives of "miracle worker" Annie Sullivan who grew up in a poorhouse and Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, the noted abolitionist, transcendentalist, and early social worker; and When Social Problems Fester as Public Attention Fades: The Case of Homelessness in America 1979 to 2009, a history of the recent period of homelessness.