Author’s Tranquility Press Presents The Goffman Course, Exploring the Rules Beneath Everyday Social Life
MARIETTA, GA – November 6, 2026 – Author’s Tranquility Press presents The Goffman Course, a collection of philosophical and sociological essays by Tom Hood and Dwight Van de Vate examining how Erving Goffman observed and interpreted social life.
Ordinary encounters give the book its subject matter. The essays closely examine how people present themselves, interpret situations and explain their lives. They encourage readers to look again at behavior that familiarity can make easy to overlook.
The collection grew out of a course taught jointly at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Hood, a sociologist, and Van de Vate, a philosopher, each lectured one day a week. A third-class meeting was reserved for discussion. Undergraduate and graduate students read Goffman’s work and brought their questions to that exchange.
Goffman himself visited on each of the three occasions the course was taught. According to the preface, those visits included presentations connected to work that later appeared in Frame Analysis, Gender Advertisements and Forms of Talk. That history gives the collection a connection to ideas still taking shape.
The authors approach Goffman through questions, examples and comparisons with other thinkers. Their essays examine his conclusions alongside his methods, asking readers to consider how observations become interpretations of social behavior.
The volume includes lectures on Goffman’s earlier writings and an extended engagement with Frame Analysis. Hood also develops an essay on apologia, examining accounts people give of their lives through Augustine’s Confessions and autobiographical accounts of gender transition.
The classroom origins remain central to the book’s appeal. These essays were written to provoke discussion, giving readers interested in philosophy and sociology something to question, revisit and carry into their own observations.
Purchase The Goffman Course on Amazon to examine the social encounters that usually pass without a second thought, guided by two professors who made questioning them a shared intellectual pursuit.
About the Authors
Tom Hood, PhD, is professor emeritus of sociology at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where he joined the faculty in 1965. The late Dwight Van de Vate Jr., PhD, taught philosophy there for more than thirty years.
About Author’s Tranquility Press
Author’s Tranquility Press helps authors bring books to market through publishing, publicity, marketing, and distribution services.
Media Contact
Company Name: Author’s Tranquility Press
Contact Person: Louela Sanders, Marketing Fulfillment Associate
Email: Send Email
Phone: (866) 411-8655
Address:531 Roselane Street NW Suite 400-175
City: Marietta
State: GA, 30060
Country: United States
Website: www.authorstranquilitypress.com
