Christopher Muller is Professor of Sociology at Harvard University. He taught at the University of California, Berkeley before joining the Harvard faculty in 2023. He studies the political economy of incarceration in the United States from Reconstruction to the present, with a particular focus on how agricultural labor markets, migration, and struggles over land and labor have affected incarceration and racial and class inequality in incarceration. He has also written on the causes and effects of environmental inequality and inequality in death from infectious disease.
His current work is focused on understanding long-run patterns in the Black and White incarceration rates since slavery, particularly why the Black incarceration rate was lower in the South than in the North for much of the 20th century, why it was lowest in the South’s cotton belt, and why it began to increase when it did. This work aims to clarify the relationship between incarceration and slavery, peonage, and broader shifts in the agricultural economy in the United States. A short overview can be found here.
Select publications
Racial Inequality in the Prime of Life: Infectious Disease Mortality in U.S. Cities, 1906-1933. 2023. Social Science History 47:491-504. With Aja Antoine-Jones, James J. Feigenbaum, Lauren Hoehn-Velasco, and Elizabeth Wrigley-Field.
Racial and Class Inequality in US Incarceration in the Early Twenty-First Century. 2022. Social Forces 101:803-828. With Alexander F. Roehrkasse.
1918 Every Year: Racial Inequality in Infectious Mortality, 1906-1942. 2022. American Economic Association Papers and Proceedings 112:199-204. With James J. Feigenbaum, Lauren Hoehn-Velasco, and Elizabeth Wrigley-Field.
The Political Economy of Incarceration in the Cotton South, 1910-1925. 2021. American Journal of Sociology 127:828-866. With Daniel Schrage.
Exclusion and Exploitation: The Incarceration of Black Americans from Slavery to the Present. 2021. Science 374:282-286.
Regional and Racial Inequality in Infectious Disease Mortality in U.S. Cities, 1900-1948. 2019. Demography 56:1371-1388. With James J. Feigenbaum, and Elizabeth Wrigley-Field.
What Percentage of Americans Have Ever Had a Family Member Incarcerated?: Evidence from the Family History of Incarceration Survey (FamHIS). 2019. Socius 6:1-45. With Peter K. Enns, Youngmin Yi, Megan Comfort, Alyssa Goldman, Hedwig Lee, Sara Wakefield, Emily A. Wang, and Christopher Wildeman.
Freedom and Convict Leasing in the Postbellum South. 2018. American Journal of Sociology 124:367-405.
Environmental Inequality: The Social Causes and Consequences of Lead Exposure. 2018. Annual Review of Sociology 44:263-282. With Robert J. Sampson, and Alix S. Winter.
Racial Inequality in the Annual Risk of Tuberculosis Infection in the United States, 1910-1933. 2017. Epidemiology & Infection 145:1797-1804. With Jonathan L. Zelner and James J. Feigenbaum.
Tenancy, Marriage, and the Boll Weevil Infestation, 1892-1930. 2017. Demography 54:1029-1049. With Deirdre Bloome and James J. Feigenbaum.
Geographic Variation in the Cumulative Risk of Imprisonment and Parental Imprisonment in the United States. 2016. Demography 53:1499-1509. With Christopher Wildeman.
Lead Exposure and Violent Crime in the Early Twentieth Century. 2016. Explorations in Economic History 62:51-86. With James J. Feigenbaum.
Tenancy and African American Marriage in the Postbellum South. 2015. Demography 52:1409-1430. With Deirdre Bloome.
Mass Imprisonment and Trust in the Law. 2014. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 651:139-158. With Daniel Schrage.
Mass Incarceration, Macrosociology, and the Poor. 2013. Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 647:166-189. With Bruce Western.
Northward Migration and the Rise of Racial Disparity in American Incarceration, 1880-1950. 2012. American Journal of Sociology 118:281-326.
Mass Imprisonment and Inequality in Health and Family Life. 2012. Annual Review of Law and Social Science 8:11-30. With Christopher Wildeman.
Short essays
Tools for Historical Sociologists. 2017. Trajectories: Newsletter of the ASA Comparative Historical Sociology Section 28:32-35
Politics and Science in the Work of W. E. B. Du Bois. 2015. European Journal of Sociology 56:407-412.
Instrumental Variables Regression. 2014. Pp. 277-299 in The SAGE Handbook of Regression Analysis and Causal Inference edited by Henning Best and Christof Wolf. London: Sage. With Christopher Winship and Stephen L. Morgan.
Punishment and Inequality. 2012. Pp. 169-185 in The SAGE Handbook of Punishment and Society, edited by Jonathan Simon and Richard Sparks. London: Sage. With Christopher Wildeman.