Janet Wolff

Janet Wolff (born 25 March 1943) is a British sociologist and art historian. After working for some time as a secretary at the North Western Gas Board, she decided to attend university after seeing her sister go to one, and she obtained her BSS and PhD at the University of Birmingham. She worked at University of Leeds, University of Rochester, Columbia University, and eventually the University of Manchester, where she retired as professor emeritus. She has written several books on sociology and art studies, and following her retirement from Manchester, the history of Manchester. Biography Early life and education Wolff, of German Jewish descent, where she directed the PhD program in visual and cultural studies (1991–2001). where she served as Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the School of the Arts from 2001 to 2006.

Wolff focuses on the sociology of art; aesthetics; and 20th-century art.

Wolff became interested in non-academic writing after retiring from Manchester. She has also co-edited several books on the history of Manchester, such as Culture in Manchester (2013), The Photographs of Zygmunt Bauman (2023), and The Simons of Manchester (2024). (ed. with Jane Routh) The Sociology of Literature: Theoretical Approaches (1977) (ed. with Michele Barrett, Philip Corrigan, and Annette Kuhn) Ideology and Cultural Production (1979) The Social Production of Art (1981) Aesthetics and the Sociology of Art (1983) (ed. with John Seed) The Culture of Capital: Art, Power and the Nineteenth-Century Middle Class (1988) Feminine Sentences: Essays on Women and Culture (1990) Resident Alien: Feminist Cultural Criticism (1995) AngloModern: Painting and Modernity in Britain and the United States (2003) The Aesthetics of Uncertainty (2008) (ed. with Mike Savage) Culture in Manchester (2013)