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Society for US Intellectual History Blog - History
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*The Intellectual Matter of Black Lives*: Robert Greene II on Biko Mandela Gray’s *Black Life Matter: Blackness, Religion, and the Subject* | Society for US Intellectual History
One of the key tenets of American intellectual history is the relationship between Black Americans and the state. A wide array of books written in recent years—Martha Jones Birthright Citizenship and Charles Mills’ The Racial Contract, among so many others—come to mind. Undoubtedly, the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement in the 2010s, and
Mary A. DeCredico on Anders Bo Rasmussen’s *Civil War Settlers: Scandinavians, Citizenship, and American Empire, 1848-1870* | Society for US Intellectual History
The ethnic element of the American Civil War tends to focus on the impact German and Irish immigrants had on the Union war effort. More recently, Richard Rosen has expanded the ethnic contribution to include Northern and Southern Jews. Anders Bo Rasmussen’s latest monograph focuses on the role Scandinavian settlers—Swedish, Norwegian and Danish—played in the
The Conservative Long Game in Higher Ed, Part 5: Emotional Manipulation, Victimhood, & Attractiveness | Society for US Intellectual History
The late 1960s saw campus conservatives refine techniques of emotional manipulation that would echo down through the years, even in larger contexts such as the Republican Party and in various national media endeavors. Lauren Lassabe Shepherd’s Resistance from the Right outlines two that I want to highlight today that fall in the realm of emotional
Alex Lubin on Penny M. Von Eschen’s *Paradoxes of Nostalgia: Cold War Triumphalism and Global Disorder Since 1989* | Society for US Intellectual History
At the time of this writing a recently elected congressman from Nassau County, New York is facing media and political fire for fabricating key features of his biography to appeal to voters. Among George Devolder Santos’ myriad biographical lies is that his grandparents were Ukrainian Jewish refugees from Belgium who fled the Holocaust, then changed
“Robotic History”: Michael J. Kramer on Dustin A. Abnet’s *The American Robot: A Cultural History* | Society for US Intellectual History
Like Klaatu with his robot companion Gort in the 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still (remade with Keanu Reeves in 2008), Dustin A. Abnet has come to tell us about a history Americans only partly understand. In his study of "the idea of the robot in American culture," Abnet notices that Americans have
The Conservative Long Game in Higher Ed, Part 4: Weaponized Humor – Spoof Clubs, Publications, & Theater | Society for US Intellectual History
In Resistance from the Right, Lauren Lassabe Shepherd shows us how conservative campus activists understood and marshaled the power of emotion. They realized that both humor and victimhood could be weaponized—used to manipulate the campus mood and perceptions of their commitments. Humor and victimhood afforded them the opportunity to gain listeners. Both involved theater and
“Loving and Hating the Cute”: Audrey Wu Clark on Leslie Bow’s *Racist Love: Asian Abstraction and the Pleasures of Fantasy* | Society for US Intellectual History
Racist Love: Asian Abstraction and the Pleasures of Fantasy is an expertly-written, relevant, post-COVID-19 study that expands what Sianne Ngai has labelled “the cute” regarding ideas that shape aesthetic categories applied to Asian Americans (something to introduce core concept). Ngai defined “the cute” as “an aesthetic disclosing the surprisingly wide spectrum of feelings, ranging from
The Conservative Long Game in Higher Ed, Part 3: Campus Information Wars – Tactics, Strategies, and Doing the Work | Society for US Intellectual History
Members of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) did not stop with creating “innocuous” auxiliaries and front groups to help forward their anti-leftist cause. Working from a base message that heavily emphasized anticommunism, many other practical tactics and strategies were employed on college campuses. Lauren Lassabe Shepherd outlines most all of these efforts in Resistance from
The History of Academic Departments–Call for Respondents | Society for US Intellectual History
The History of Academic Departments As part of an effort to bring attention to the history of academic departments and to develop the subject as a distinct area of historical inquiry, the three of us named below are seeking 1) to identify historians and others, with an eye on a future volume of essays
Marcos de Brum Lopes on Zachary Jonathan Jacobson’s *On Nixon’s Madness: An Emotional History* | Society for US Intellectual History
A couple of weeks ago, during a candid conversation with a dear friend of mine, Zachary J. Jacobson’s book on Nixon’s Madness came up. Politics and art are the main themes we usually talk about. Coming from different countries and cultures (Brazil and the US, for instance), we look for qualified insights on what’s happening
The Conservative Long Game in Higher Ed, Part 2: Campus Information Wars | Society for US Intellectual History
One of the more difficult things for faculty, staff, and leadership to deal with in higher education is idea that their cherished place of work is also a site for information wars. Many professors---especially in the STEM fields and professional schools, but also in some social sciences---want to imagine that they can teach their content,
Daniela Blei on Robert C. Ritchie’s *The Lure of the Beach: A Global History* | Society for US Intellectual History
According to a 2023 report by the UN’s World Meteorological Organization, sea level rise poses “unthinkable” risks to the safety and security of societies around the world. Roughly 40% of humanity lives within 60 miles of a coast, a figure that jumps to nearly 80% if freshwater coasts are included. By 2050, extreme storm surges
The Conservative Long Game in Higher Ed, Part 1 | Society for US Intellectual History
In her 2023 book, Resistance from the Right, Lauren Lassabe Shepherd raises a number of issues that deserve our full attention. Whether or not you work in the academy, what happens there has a way of emanating outward—into K-12 education, adult education, scholarly societies, libraries, culture, government, politics, and society. Tensions felt in U.S. higher
Priscila Dorella on Hannah Noel’s *Deflective Whiteness: Co-opting Black and Latinx Identity Politics* | Society for US Intellectual History
Hannah Noel’s book explores the continuing durability of white privilege in the United States. The author is a professor of interdisciplinary studies, whose work examines media representations for how competing groups of whites address questions of race. Her interest in History takes place in dialogue with cultural, media and political issues in the United States
Indexing: Lost Art, Dead End, or Missed Opportunity? (Part 2) | Society for US Intellectual History
Apart from learning to study them, I have also produced an index. Indexing my own first book (The Dream of a Democratic Culture, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) was an enjoyable and rewarding experience. That said, the task of indexing arose because I had no choice. My first-time academic work was published outside of an academic position,
Jordan Chloë Jackson and Megan Geigner on Mike Amezcua’s *Making Mexican Chicago: From Postwar Settlement to the Age of Gentrification* | Society for US Intellectual History
Mike Amezcua’s 2022 Making Mexican Chicago: From Postwar Settlement to the Age of Gentrification chronicles how the historic racialization and otherization of Mexicans as “perpetual foreigners, illegals, [and] criminals” influenced the formation of both figurative and geographic communities and development of Mexican identity in Chicago.[1] Amezcua shows how immigration policies alongside federal, state, city, and
Indexing: Lost Art, Dead End, or Missed Opportunity? (Part 1) | Society for US Intellectual History
While scrolling social media pages awhile back, I found one friend appreciating, in a moment, her current writing project—a book manuscript. The appreciation arose in the context of editing her project’s forthcoming index. I did not inquire closely but I suspect the index review revealed, in a satisfying fashion, the full scale of the book:
Christine Talbot on Elinor Cleghorn’s *Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World* | Society for US Intellectual History
This probably won’t come as a shock, but doctors don’t take women seriously. Not all doctors and not always, but overwhelmingly and sometimes with deadly consequences. Elinor Cleghorn’s book Unwell Women: Misdiagnosis and Myth in a Man-Made World traces the gendered medical myths that have produced a long legacy of medical ignorance, arrogance, misapprehension, and
Why the Study of the Right is Broken, Part II | Society for US Intellectual History
For most of its collective existence, the study of the right in the US has suffered from an anxious, constricted set of categories and epistemological assumptions about who exactly the conservative is. Terms such as “radical right,” “Christian Right,” and “Extreme Right” provide a less than ideal set of options for describing the nature of
USIH 2024 Conference Keynote, Updates, and Reminders | Society for US Intellectual History
We are so excited for the USIH conference later this year! Based on the theme “Knowledge and Belief,” the conference will take place in Boston on November 14-16 at the Boston Sheraton. The deadline for panel and paper submissions is April 15, and you can find the CFP at this link. While we assume everyone
Catharine Coleborne on Sami Schalk’s *Black Disability Politics* | Society for US Intellectual History
Written during the COVID pandemic, Sami Schalk’s Black Disability Politics is designed as a scholarly intervention into present communities affected by disability. Inflected by the experiences of black people during the pandemic in the United States in 2020-21, the book offers a critical appraisal of past episodes in American health history including the role of
Oscar Winberg on Remembering an Icon: Norman Lear | Society for US Intellectual History
The death of Norman Lear, at age 101, late last year, on December 5, was a strange moment for me as a historian. I have spent the last ten years with the man. I have not only worn out my copy of his 2014 autobiography Even This I Get to Experience, but I have read,
Why the Study of the Right is Broken, Part I | Society for US Intellectual History
In the summer of 1981, the New Left Review published a special issue titled, “The Anatomy of Reaganism.” Featuring the writings of prominent sociologists and political theorists including Alan Wolfe and Mike Davis, the issue explored the ways in which “the radical right has played a major role in determining political agendas around the
S-USIH at AHA 2024 | Society for US Intellectual History
Each year the Society for US Intellectual History is proud to sponsor at least one session at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association. For 2024, we sent a few of our best to San Francisco. Andrew McKevitt organized a brilliant and timely roundtable, “Beyond the Second Amendment: Rethinking U.S. Gun History,” featuring remarks
Katlyn Marie Carter on Jordan E. Taylor *Misinformation Nation: Foreign News and the Politics of Truth in Revolutionary America* | Society for US Intellectual History
Identifying striking similarities with our present politics and media, Jordan Taylor argues that the late eighteenth century “witnessed the birth of not only modern democratic politics but also modern information politics”.[1] The Age of Revolutions both fueled and was fueled by a massive volume of information, a news-hungry public that tended to treat “truth as
The American Dream: Is That All There Is? Is That All There Was? | Society for US Intellectual History
I always get a bit queasy over the catchphrase “the American Dream.” I cannot count the number of times I’ve heard (or read) variations on: “All he wants is his piece of the American Dream,” or: “Owning a home is key to the American Dream,” or: “They came here in search of the American Dream,”
Ryan M. Irwin on David Allen’s *Every Citizen a Statesman: The Dream of a Democratic Foreign Policy in the American Century* | Society for US Intellectual History
David Allen’s Every Citizen a Statesman is about an ambitious, unfocused project that never had a chance at success. The Foreign Policy Association, the book’s subject, was an organization that thrived for a time in the interwar years, offering a participatory alternative to the now famous (then fledgling) Council on Foreign Relations. If the Council
John Milton Cooper, Jr. on Patrick Weil’s *The Madman in the White House: Sigmund Freud, Ambassador Bullitt, and the Lost Psychobiography of Woodrow Wilson* | Society for US Intellectual History
You can’t judge this book by its cover, and you can’t judge it by its title or its subtitle, either. All three are misleading, each in its own way. The dust jacket cover features a photograph of a haggard-looking Woodrow Wilson, taken a little over a year before his death, and the last two words
#USIH2024 News: Panelist Meetup Page | Society for US Intellectual History
Greetings, USIH colleagues, old and new! We welcome your proposals for our 2024 conference, to be held November 14-16, 2024, at the Back Bay Sheraton, located in the heart of Boston’s historic neighborhood of Copley Square. Submissions are due on 15 April 2024, and you can find our Call for Papers here. Our theme is “Knowledge
“Multiple Histories”: Audrey Wu Clark on Catherine Ceniza Choy’s *Asian American Histories of the United States* | Society for US Intellectual History
Asian American Histories of the United States is an excellent, innovative, accessible, and very present history of Asian America. In particular, it employs an unusual reverse chronological structure in its history. It also makes a point of tracing the multiple “histories” of Asian Americans. Writing from the vantage point of the Stop Asian Hate movement
Richard Cándida Smith on Christina Morina’s *The Invention of Marxism: How an Idea Changed Everything* | Society for US Intellectual History
The book presents a group portrait of nine European intellectuals active in four European countries at the end of the nineteenth century: Eduard Bernstein and Rosa Luxemburg from Germany (Luxemburg came originally from Poland, at the time a kingdom within the Russian Empire); Karl Kautsky and Victor Adler from Austria; Jean Jaurès and Jules Guesdes
CFP: USIH-OAH 2025 | Society for US Intellectual History
Greetings, historians! S-USIH is proud to continue to host 1-2 sessions at the Organization of American Historians’ next annual meeting, to be held in Chicago from April 3-6, 2025. All active S-USIH members are encouraged to propose a panel or roundtable for #OAH2025. The OAH states: "In a departure from past practice, this OAH meeting
Out Now! JER Forum: Expanding the Boundaries of Intellectual History in the Early Republic | Society for US Intellectual History
Intellectual history is featured in this thoughtful roundtable now out in the Journal of the Early Republic, VOLUME 43, NUMBER 4 (WINTER 2023). The S-USIH blog welcomes additional responses to the forum. Email Katherine Jewell (kjewell1@fitchburgstate.edu) with proposed responses. Amy Kittelstrom introduces the forum, a series five articles. Kittelstrom explains "how current scholarship diverges from
Call for Submissions: S-USIH 2024 Prizes | Society for US Intellectual History
Hello, scholars! We are proud to sponsor several prizes honoring your scholarship in American intellectual history. Please see below for the 2024 awards and note that all submissions are due by 1 March 2024. Should you have any questions, please contact us at susihistory@gmail.com. Thank you. S-USIH 2023 Annual Book Award The Society for U.
CFP: USIH-IUPUI Community Scholars 2024 | Society for US Intellectual History
In partnership with the Institute for American Thought at IUPUI, the Society for U.S. Intellectual History is pleased to announce the continuation of a new opportunity to support contingent faculty, independent scholars, and historians who work beyond the academy: the USIH-IUPUI Community Scholars Program. Learn more about our inaugural cohort here. Thanks to the inspiration
Jaime Sánchez, Jr. on Heather Hendershot’s *When the News Broke: Chicago 1968 and the Polarizing of America* | Society for US Intellectual History
Follow mainstream media coverage of any major event today and you will likely find a social media firestorm rife with accusations of political bias and outright “fake news.” But since when have mainstream news outlets had such a target on their backs? Historian Heather Hendershot argues that the fallout from television coverage of the 1968
Best Reads of 2023 | Society for US Intellectual History
Goodreads.com has emailed me the disturbing information that I’m among its top 25% of readers, "based on the number of books you read this year." How could that be? I mean, my average came out to about a book a week—and I didn’t rate any higher than 25%? It’s a hardcore bunch over at Goodreads.com.
Kristen T. Oertel on Kathryn Walkiewicz’s *Reading Territory: Indigenous and Black Freedom, Removal, and the Nineteenth-Century State* | Society for US Intellectual History
Scholarship that explores intersectional histories and identities has ballooned in recent years, and it adds an important corrective to the one- and two-dimensional history that has so long dominated academia. Narrating this complicated history poses challenges for any writer, and Kathryn Walkiewicz develops a unique and effective heuristic tool for exploring white colonial violence against
Roundtable: “The Importance of the History of Libertarianism” – Andrew Koppelman’s Response to Burgin and Arcenas | Society for US Intellectual History
Thanks to Claire Rydell Arcenas and Angus Burgin for their smart responses to my book, Burning Down the House.[1] Burgin wonders why I focus on radical libertarianism, which “seem[s] increasingly marginal to present-day American political conversation.” Arcenas asks what academic historians should take away from my work. Burgin - and, elsewhere, Jennifer Burns[2] - press
Roundtable: Claire Rydell Arcenas on Andrew Koppelman, Burning Down the House: How Libertarian Philosophy Was Corrupted by Delusion and Greed (St Martins, 2022) | Society for US Intellectual History
Like most readers, when I open a book for the first time, I usually have some idea of what I may encounter. From the title or the cover design, from a dustjacket blurb or where I found the book on a library or bookseller’s shelf, I know something about it even before I start reading.