Ritchie Savage

Biography

Ritchie Savage is an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Sociology at Bradley University. He researches populism and political discourse with interests in social and political theory, language, culture, movements, structuralism, and psychoanalysis. His book, Populist Discourse in Venezuela and the United States: American Unexceptionalism and Political Identity formation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2018), examines the symbolic structure of Venezuelan and U.S. political discourse present in the cases of Acción Democrática, McCarthyism, Chavismo, and the Tea Party in order to posit a framework for understanding the recent proliferation and successes of new institutionalized forms of populism around the world. Among his publications are “Populism in the U.S.” in the Routledge International Handbook of Global Populism 2018, “A Comparison of ‘New Institutionalized’ Populism in Venezuela and the USA,” Constellations 21(4) 2014, “From McCarthyism to the Tea Party: Interpreting Anti-Leftist Forms of US Populism in Comparative Perspective,” New Political Science 34(4) 2012, and “Populist Elements in Contemporary American Political Discourse,” Sociological Review 58 (Special Issue) 2011. He is also working on a series of articles on the relations between political theory, populism, imperialism, and empire, as well as a book manuscript, A Brief History of Populism in Europe and the Americas.

Teaching

The Sociological Perspective (SOC 100)
The Sociology of Globalization (SOC 326)
People, Power, Politics (SOC 345)