The Charles Seeger Lecturer for SEM 1988 will be the distinguished sociologist, Howard Becker. He is widely known for his publications on the sociology of music and the arts. The title of his lecture is "Sociology and Ethnomusicology.”

Howard Becker received his Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Chicago in 1951. He has been a professor of sociology at Northwestern University since 1965, and became a MacArthur Professor of Arts and Sciences in 1982. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the Center for Interdisciplinary Research in the Arts at Northwestern. His major publications include Outsiders: Studies in the Sociology of Deviance (1963); The Other Side (1964); Sociological Work: Method and Substance (1970); Art Worlds (1982); Writing for Social Scientists (1986); and Doing Things Together (1986). His current research deals with the organization of theatrical communities.