Neurosociology: Fundamentals and Current Findings

Professor David D. Franks is a Professor of Sociology, who in 1972 received a large Grant from NIE to study the different effects of open and traditional Kansas City high schools on self-esteem and the development of personal autonomy. The 1972 grant was the largest unsolicited grant in the country that year. He was also granted tenure and promoted at that time. He served as chair of the faculty grievance committee and as president of the Faculty Senate. In the summer of 1977 he accepted a position as chair of the department at VCU. In the early 80s, after writing on the usefulness of symbolic interaction in studying a social systems understanding of rape and partner abuse, he worked to develop a new sub-specialty in the Sociology of Emotions. This involved writing articles arguing for the social nature of something that had hithertofor been viewed as exclusively psychological. To this end he was also involved in editing guest issues of journals and an annual hard-back series, Social Perspectives on emotions, as well as several other volumes demonstrating the utility of the sub-field. He was also on numerous steering committees and chaired offices in the early days of the subsection. In the early 80s and early 90s he was vice president of the symbolic interaction national society. He has presented papers at national meetings with Dr. Lyng of this department on the importance of keeping a coherent idea of objectivity in our approaches to the social construction of reality and applying sociology to real world problems. Dr. Franks retired and was appointed Professor Emeritus in 2001. In 2015, Franks received The Life-Time Achievement Award from the American Sociological Association's Section on the Sociology of Emotions.