Cassandra Sever

Cassandra Sever is interested in the sociology of the self, and the ways individuals embody, and fail to embody, the metaphysical commitments of their cultures. In her current work, she is re-conceptualizing the self as an object in sociology toward creating a theory of cultural despair. With this theory, she hopes to explain individual crises of the self that become patterned across society. She is compelled by the social crises that we commonly recognize as manifestations of despair, such as suicide and mental health epidemics, as well as those we may struggle to recognize as despair because of own moral and social commitments. She strives to create a “universal” object of the self that allows scholars to step beyond these commitments, and thus create a new route by which to see social problems plaguing the self, both in current times and across history. Such an object and theory might, for instance, re-imagine contemporary anti-democratic sentiment in the West and nostalgia for totalitarian regimes, often viewed as social problems of identity-based conflict, as manifestations of cultural despair.

With an interest in disciplinary metaphysics and epistemology (in particular, how sociology understands the human person and “thinks” with it), her work commonly threads historic philosophy into sociology. Her theoretical work critically considers a person’s orientation to the Good (his lifelong attempts to be a “good” person and to know a meaningful life), a defining, and too often overlooked, feature of being human. More broadly, she questions how elites and moral institutions teach us to know ourselves, how knowledge of the self spreads across culture, and how these ways of knowing can create new systems of inequality.

Sever works at the intersection of cultural sociology and social theory, and her work consistently incorporates the insights of everyday persons. She sees capturing and valuing the worldviews of everyday people to be essential for understanding despair across society and for creating substantive theory. She, therefore, has a strong interest in ethnography, in-depth interviews and oral history methodologies. Her prior theoretical work has explored the psychic harm crisis in the United States, which included suggesting where contemporary psychic harm originated, examining why it flourishes, and outlining why a desire to appear socially marginalized has become commonplace in certain spaces. Her prior fieldwork has investigated sex work, addiction and sexual offenses in communities of poverty.

She enjoys teaching Introduction to Sociology along with courses that grapple with the self and meaning (including sociology of the self and religion). She also likes teaching courses that help students engage with the wider community, such as ethnographic methods, and social science data literacy and public writing. She has also taught courses in crime/deviance and social problems.

Sever is a proponent of viewpoint diversity to better understand the world and of intellectuals engaging with everyday persons. Professionally, she is a member of Heterodox Academy’s faculty Writing Cohort, and Managing Editor of the American Journal of Cultural Sociology. At Mount Holyoke, she is a Heterodox Academy Campus Community Co-Chair and faculty advisor for the Mount Holyoke News.