In Memoriam: Kai Erikson
by Phil Brown, Michael Edelstein, and Steve Kroll-Smith [See the PDF with images] We mourn and celebrate our friend and colleague Kai Erikson, a legendary scholar who helped us see the relationships between environmental sociology and the sociology of disaster, who died November 10, 2025 in Hamden, Connecticut at the age of 94. The William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of Sociology and American Studies, Emeritus at Yale University, Kai traversed a long career of creative, brilliant, sensitive scholarship that read like extended essays in a literary magazine. Kai began his academic career at the University of Pittsburg. He was a tenured professor at Emory University when he accepted a position at Yale where he spent 45 years. Importantly, he had a joint appointment in Sociology and the American Studies Program. He edited the Yale Review for 11 years working with such luminaries as James Merrill, Joyce Carol Oates, R.W.B. Lewis, and Adrienne …