In Memoriam: Liah Greenfeld A Reflection from the President of the Comparative Civilizations Forum

Authors

• Bibi Pelić, Comparative Civilizations ForumFollow

Keywords

Liah Greenfeld’s legacy, nationalism and modernity, civilizational theory, cultural frameworks

Abstract

It is with sorrow and gratitude that the Comparative Civilizations Forum dedicates this special 2026 Fall issue of the Comparative Civilizations Review to the memory of Professor Liah Greenfeld, who passed away in May of this year.

Professor Liah Greenfeld was a sociologist, an anthropologist, a political scientist — and more than any single label can hold. Across four decades at Harvard and then at Boston University, she built a body of work, from Nationalism: Five Roads to Modernity to The Spirit of Capitalism to Mind, Modernity, Madness, that stepped outside the boundaries the modern academy likes to draw. She believed the mind, the nation, the economy, and the civilization were not separate subjects, but one subject seen at different scales. Few scholars are more naturally suited to be honored by an organization devoted to the comparative study of civilizations. In many ways, this was the question she spent her life answering: how culture, passed down and reimagined across generations, becomes the architecture of a people's mind. This festschrift is not only a tribute we owe her. It is a recognition of how much she had already given us to study.

Recommended Citation

Pelić, Bibi (2026) "In Memoriam: Liah Greenfeld A Reflection from the President of the Comparative Civilizations Forum," Comparative Civilizations Review: Vol. 95: No. 95, Article 4.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/ccr/vol95/iss95/4