Erving Goffman was born in 1922 in Alberta, Canada, to parents of Jewish-Ukrainian descent. In 1945, he enrolled as a graduate student at the University of Chicago, where he earned his doctorate in 1953. After graduating from Chicago, Goffman accepted a position at the University of California at Berkeley. In 1968, he left Berkeley to accept a distinguished chair in sociology and anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania. Goffman remained at Pennsylvania until he died as a result of stomach cancer in 1982. At the time of his death, he was the president of the American Sociological Association, and he crafted his last published work, “The Interaction Order,” as his presidential address.

Goffman was one of the most original and provocative sociologists of the twentieth century. ...