Larry J. Griffin is the John Shelton Reed Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he also teaches in the history and American Studies departments. Although he remains deeply interested in the methodology of social research, especially in ways to historicize sociology, his research and teaching interests now focus on collective memory, the political and cultural uses of the past, race, and social inequality, especially as all of these are manifest in the context of the American South.