Celia Stopnicka Heller

{{Short description|American sociologist (1922–2011)}}

{{Use mdy dates|date = February 2025}}

Celia Stopnicka Heller (20 November 1922 – 15 April 2011) was a Poland-born American sociologist.

After graduating from Brooklyn College, in 1950, Heller entered a graduate program in sociology at Columbia University, earning a Master's in 1952, and a Ph.D. in 1962. Subsequently, she taught at Hunter College, beginning as an assistant professor, in 1964."Celia S(topnicka) Heller." Contemporary Authors Online. Detroit: Gale, 2002. Retrieved from Biography in Context database.{{Primary source inline|date=February 2025}} She became a full professor there in 1972, and retired with emeritus status in 1984. During her career at Hunter College, she also taught at the Graduate Center, CUNY. From 1970 to 1971 she was a visiting professor at Tel Aviv University and Bar Ilan University.{{Primary source inline|date=February 2025}}

Her first book was Mexican American Youth: Forgotten Youth at the Crossroads (Random House, 1966).{{Cite book |title=Mexican American Youth: Forgotten Youth at the Crossroads |publisher=Random House |year=1966 |via=Internet Archive |url=https://archive.org/details/mexicanamericany0000hell |url-access=registration |quote=Celia Stopnicka Heller. |last1=Heller |first1=Celia Stopnicka }}{{Primary source inline|date=February 2025}} This was researched while she was at UCLA and represents the first of three phases of her writing.

The second phase of Heller's writing is represented by Structured social inequality: a reader in comparative social stratification (Macmillan, 1968),{{cite book | url=https://archive.org/details/structuredsocial0000unse | url-access=registration |title = Structured social inequality: A reader in comparative social stratification| publisher=Macmillan |last1 = Heller|first1 = Celia Stopnicka|year = 1968| isbn=9780023534904 }}{{Primary source inline|date=February 2025}} which a collection of articles, some of which she wrote.

Her last phase of writing includes On the Edge of Destruction: Jews in Poland Between the Two World Wars (Columbia University Press 1977). The book is dedicated to her grandfather, the Rabbi Shaul ben Yitzhak Yosef ha-Kohen Rosenman.{{citation needed|date=April 2020}} It won a National Jewish Book Award in the Jewish History category.{{Cite web|url=https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/awards/national-jewish-book-awards/past-winners?category=30762|title=Past Winners|last=|first=|date=|website=Jewish Book Council|language=en|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200522081901/https://www.jewishbookcouncil.org/awards/national-jewish-book-awards/past-winners?category=30762 |archive-date=2020-05-22 |access-date=2020-01-23}}{{Primary source inline|date=February 2025}}

She served as president of the Association for the Social Scientific Study of Jewry 1977–1979.{{cite web |url=http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/heller.htm |title=Content Pages of the Encyclopedia of Religion and Social Science |accessdate=2012-09-22 |url-status=dead |archiveurl=https://archive.today/20121212030416/http://hirr.hartsem.edu/ency/heller.htm |archivedate=2012-12-12 }}

According to the late Irving Piliavin, Professor and director emeritus at the University of Wisconsin School of Social Welfare, as Celia Stopnicka Rosenthal did, she wrote a mimeographed manuscript, Toward the Conceptualization of 'Needs', about which there is no further information.Council on Social Work Education., Mendes, R. H. P., Piliavin, I., Romanyshyn, J. M., & Bisno, H. (1963). Social welfare as a social institution; illustrative syllabi for the basic course in undergraduate social welfare. New York: Council on Social Work Education.

She published twice in the American Journal of Sociology and once in the British Journal of Sociology.Rosenthal, C. S. (1955). Functions of Polish trade unions: their progression toward the Soviet pattern. British Journal of Sociology, 6, 264-276. doi: 10.2307/586951; Rosenthal, C. S. (1953). Social stratification of the Jewish community in a small Polish town. American Journal of Sociology, 59, 1-10; Rosenthal, C. S. (1954). Deviation and social change in the Jewish community of a small Polish town. American Journal of Sociology, 60, 177-181.