Gary Alan Fine (Ph.D., Harvard University, Social Psychology, 1976) is the James E. Johnson Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University. He is interested in understanding controversial reputations and problematic collective memories of figures. His current research involves shifting reputations and political positions of Southern segregationist politics and the examination of ruptures in political alliances. He is the co-author of Symbols, Selves, and Social Reality (Oxford, 2013) and the author of Authors of the Storm: Meteorology and the Culture of Prediction (Chicago, 2010) and Everyday Genius: Self-Taught (Chicago, 2004). Several of his twenty books have received disciplinary awards in sociology and in folklore.