Gary Alan Fine

Gary Alan Fine is an American sociologist and social psychologist, born on May 11, 1950, in New York, NY, known for his ethnographic studies of small group cultures, including Little League baseball, mushroom hunters, and artists. He earned his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1972 and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1976, taught at the University of Minnesota and University of Georgia, and served as the James E. Johnson Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Northwestern University. Fine has authored or edited over a dozen books on topics like rumor, gossip, collective memory, and cultural production, and as of 2025, he is a Visiting Scholar at Emory University.