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Society for US Intellectual History Blog - History
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Derek G. Handley on James Walvin’s *A World Transformed: Slavery in the Americas and Origins of Global Power* | Society for US Intellectual History
James Walvin’s book A World Transformed provides a wide overview of the transatlantic slave trade and of the nations that benefited from it. The scope of this book is massive in covering over 300 years of the transatlantic slave trade and how European countries amassed vast riches from it. Walvin demonstrates how “enslaved African labor
Catholic Troubles with Feminism: Gendered Activism, Insubordination, and the Camden 28, Entry #1 | Society for US Intellectual History
Today’s reflection is a necessary follow up to my last post on Catholic masculinity. Michelle Nickerson covers how feminism affected the trajectory of the Camden 28 draft board action. In fact, there is no way to fully understand the lead up, action, trial, and fallout of the Camden 28 story without a deeper consideration of
Hooper Schultz on Neil J. Young’s *Coming Out Republican: A History of the Gay Right* | Society for US Intellectual History
As Republican politicians such as Florida Governor Ron DeSantis support and pass legislation that curtails LGBTQ+ rights it is worth asking: are there any gay people in the Republican Party or on the Right in the U.S.? Neil J. Young’s Coming Out Republican traces the fascinating history of conservative and libertarian gay figures in United
Ang Li on William Gow’s *Performing Chinatown* | Society for US Intellectual History
William Gow’s Performing Chinatown: Hollywood, Tourism, and the Making of a Chinese American Community is an in-depth examination of Chinese American history in Los Angeles. Drawing from an interdisciplinary approach and extensive primary sources that include oral interviews, archival collections, and family materials—this book is a powerful record of Chinese American lived experiences. [1] Such
Ang Li on Arthur Dong’s *Performing Chinatown* | Society for US Intellectual History
Arthur Dong’s Performing Chinatown: Hollywood, Tourism, and the Making of a Chinese American Community is an in-depth examination of Chinese American history in Los Angeles. Drawing from an interdisciplinary approach and extensive primary sources that include oral interviews, archival collections, and family materials—this book is a powerful record of Chinese American lived experiences. [1] Such
“Beware the Stories We Tell About Food”: Ben Stanley on Aaron Eddens, *Seeding Empire: American Philanthrocapital and the Roots of the Green Revolution in Africa* | Society for US Intellectual History
The Green Revolution is not only a constellation of technologies and economic relationships. It is also, crucially, a story. So Aaron Eddens argues in the persuasive monograph Seeding Empire: American Philanthrocapital and the Roots of the Green Revolution in Africa (University of California Press, 2024). While many books have critiqued the Green Revolution, Eddens offers both
Catholic Masculinity—Or Sexism and The Patriarchy in the 1960s | Society for US Intellectual History
In Spiritual Criminals, Michelle Nickerson relays an obvious but salient fact: the development of the Catholic Left in the 1960s “overlapped with the feminist movement as well as the civil rights movement” (p. 49). My prior posts in this series have touched more on the civil rights movement than feminism. In any discussion of Catholicism,
Austin McCoy on Katherine Rye Jewell’s *Live from the Underground: A History of College Radio* | Society for US Intellectual History
Except for those who listened to college radio or worked as DJs as students, many who attend college might never listen to the local station, especially now that we live in the era of streaming music and podcasts where we can access full record catalogs and human- and AI-generated playlists. I was one of those
White Christian Privilege: A Case Study | Society for US Intellectual History
At two points in her story on the Camden 28, Michelle Nickerson takes on a thorny topic: racial privilege. It is indexed in Spiritual Criminals as “white privilege.” In the historical circumstances of the book, and in the larger context of the Catholic-Christian faith, let’s call it ‘white Christian privilege’. Framing it this way helps
Debating to Persuade, a Challenge for Democrats: The William James Guide to Modern Politics | Society for US Intellectual History
These essays in the form of letters to the powerful and struggling suggest that understanding about contrasting views emerging from historical and intellectual contexts can gain votes for those politicians ready to pause in the fighting long enough to listen. The first open letter, “Democrats in Power to Protesters in Streets: Mutual Prods to Peace,”
“Food Power Politics: The Weaponization Of Food In The Fight For Survival In The Delta”: Nia Raquelle Smith on Bobby Smith II’s *Food Power Politics: The Food History of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement* | Society for US Intellectual History
In his debut book, Food Power Politics: The Food History of the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, Bobby Smith II vividly recounts the story of the slow but continued and covert weaponization of food. This historical narrative, deeply rooted in the Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, serves as a powerful connection to the past, shedding light on
David S. Koffman on Rebecca Clarren’s *The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance* | Society for US Intellectual History
Rebecca Clarren’s The Cost of Free Land: Jews, Lakota, and an American Inheritance is perhaps the single best articulation of a puzzle so many Americans and Canadians are now trying to solve: how do I come to terms with the broadly horrifying repercussions on Indigenous peoples of my ancestors’ decisions to move and thrive here
Kollin Fields on Daniel Wickberg’s *Thinking the Modern: A History of American Thought, 1860-2000* | Society for US Intellectual History
Carl Becker told his fellow historians in 1931 that we are not dissimilar from “bards and story-tellers and minstrels, of soothsayers and priests, to whom in successive ages has been entrusted the keeping of the useful myths.”[1] Historians do indeed tell stories, and as Becker reminded his audience, whether story or myth, narratives often prevail
Dorothy Day’s Spiritual Leadership: Against Capitalism, Imperialism, & War | Society for US Intellectual History
Dorothy Day is a central character in Spiritual Criminals in terms of what some might call ‘spiritual formation’. The index entry for her looks brief (just 12 pages noted), but her shadow looms large over the actors behind the Camden 28 action. Day was in no way a material causal agent, per se. In fact,
“Don’t Mind Me: Andrew S. Lea on How We Think about Brains and Algorithms and How It Changed How Medicine Works” by Alex Sayf Cummings | Society for US Intellectual History
In a classic 1996 episode of Seinfeld, Elaine Benes finds herself in a doctor’s office and manages to take a peek at her chart. Her medical history is all there, but what she notices immediately is another physician’s comment that she’s a “difficult” patient – based on an encounter four years earlier. Typically, Elaine cannot
Catholic Social Teaching: Its Historical Arc in the United States | Society for US Intellectual History
Last week’s discussion of Michelle Nickerson’s Spiritual Criminals focused on a concrete historical character: Cardinal Francis Spellman. This week I want go larger. An animating theme in the book is something called "Catholic Social Teaching"---or “CST” for short.[1] This theme touches every historical activist and actor in Spiritual Criminals. Beyond the book, because CST is
Francesco Landolfi on Matthew Guariglia’s *Police & the Empire City: Race & the Origins of Modern Policing in New York* | Society for US Intellectual History
Through the extensive use of primary sources consulted at numerous archives and libraries, author Matthew Guariglia addresses the decades-long racialization theme of the New York Police Department (NYPD) from its origins to the late Progressive Era. In the history of the United States, the process of cultural assimilation by an ethnic community also passes through
Cardinal Spellman’s Cold War Patriotism | Society for US Intellectual History
In the first full narrative chapter of Spiritual Criminals: How the Camden 28 Put the Vietnam War on Trial, Michelle Nickerson sets up the contextual train of teaching and ideas in the United States, Catholic and otherwise, that allowed the “Camden 28” to come into being. Her goal is to explain how a Catholic Left,
Tom McCarthy on Marc J. Selverstone’s *The Kennedy Withdrawal: Camelot and the American Commitment to Vietnam* | Society for US Intellectual History
If President John F. Kennedy had lived, would he have committed U.S. ground forces to Vietnam, as his successor Lyndon B. Johnson eventually did? Few historical “what ifs” have haunted the minds of Baby Boomer Americans more than this one, a generation for whom the Vietnam War became the great defining historical event of their
New Blog Series: On Spiritual Criminals by Michelle Nickerson – Introduction | Society for US Intellectual History
If I am recalling correctly, Professor Michelle Nickerson and I first became acquainted in early 2016. She had already been teaching in the History Department at Loyola University Chicago for several years when I wrote her about participating in an S-USIH Blog roundtable on Andrew Hartman’s 2015 book, A War for the Soul of America.
Robert P. Watson on Osamah F. Khalil’s *A World of Enemies: America’s Wars at Home and Abroad from Kennedy to Biden * | Society for US Intellectual History
In this timely, thorough, and quite readable book, Osamah F. Khalil, an associate professor of history at Syracuse and frequent media commentator, reexamines a topic that has rightly attracted much attention in recent years; that is, the use and extension of US military power in modern times. Yet, with a critical eye, a wide array
The Poppy Acts: the agency of the non-human in Amitav Ghosh’s *Smoke and Ashes* | Society for US Intellectual History
Once in a while, even in works of popular history, an author will raise the prospect that what happened twelve thousand years ago, during the so-called Agricultural Revolution, wasn't that humans domesticated plants but that plants domesticated humans. From a Richard Dawkins ‘selfish gene’ perspective, this makes a kind of sense. To ensure the survival
Seth Chalmer on Daniel Schulman’s *The Money Kings: The Epic Story of the Jewish Immigrants Who Transformed Wall Street and Shaped Modern America* | Society for US Intellectual History
Ah, Jew-spotting!—a pastime beloved equally to antisemites and Jews. If you see someone constantly updating their social media feed with lists of famous or influential people that you might not have known are Jewish, then that someone could be the late and infamous Holocaust denier David Irving, but it could just as easily be the
dann j. Broyld on Andrew K. Diemer’s *Vigilance: The Life of William Still, Father of the Underground Railroad* | Society for US Intellectual History
Andrew K. Diemer's Vigilance is a must-read for those interested in Underground Railroad and African American history. It highlights the dynamic story of William Still “the Father of the Underground Railroad” who helped freedom seekers from slavery in the American South move further northward via Philadelphia. Diemer carefully tells the family history of William Still, starting with the
David Weinfeld: A Century of Cultural Pluralism: How an Unlikely American Friendship Should Inspire Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion | Society for US Intellectual History
As the 2024 presidential election approaches, some of the largest and most controversial issues in American politics concern legal and illegal immigration, refugee policy, and the security of the country’s borders. Americans are concerned about who gets in, who stays out, and what those determinations mean for the future of the United States. It’s an
How to Think about Robert Caro | Society for US Intellectual History
The official website of Robert A. Caro isn’t shy about quoting the Sunday Times (UK), which calls him “the greatest political biographer of the modern era.” Even as readers await the fifth volume of The Years of Lyndon Johnson, the claim cries out for perspective and comparison. Admittedly no such incontestable primacy is possible
Naida García-Crespo on Aimee Loiselle’s *Beyond Norma Rae: How Puerto Rican and Southern White Women Fought for a Place in the American Working Class* | Society for US Intellectual History
Aimee Loiselle’s Beyond Norma Rae: How Puerto Rican and Southern White Women Fought for a Place in the American Working Class presents a compelling history of the intersection of colonialism, sexism, and capitalism. The book focuses primarily on two textile union icons, Crystal Lee Sutton and Gloria Maldonado, to analyze how hegemonic discourses have appropriated
2024 Conference Program | Society for US Intellectual History
We are delighted to share with you the program for our 2024 Conference in Boston, "Knowledge and Belief." Registration will be available soon, but in the meantime we invite you to take a look at the program and get excited for what should be an amazing conference. In addition to a keynote from Dr. Keisha
Warren J. Blumenfeld on Andrew J. McKevitt’s *Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War America* | Society for US Intellectual History
I sat glued to the TV screen on the morning of April 9, 2024, carrying a full array of emotions, from intense anger to overwhelming sorrow and grief watching the victim impact statements from parents and siblings of four Michigan Oxford High School students gunned down by another student, 15-year-old Ethan Crumbley, on November 30,
Announcement: MIH-USIH 2023 Graduate Prize | Society for US Intellectual History
On behalf of the Society for U. S. Intellectual History (S-USIH) and the editors of Modern Intellectual History, we are pleased to announce the recipient of the MIH/S-USIH Graduate Student Conference Paper Prize, for the best paper presented by a graduate student at the 2023 annual meeting in Denver: Harry Devoe, "Dirt, Debt, and Dependency: Southern Agricultural
Announcement: 2024 John Dewey Prize | Society for US Intellectual History
We are delighted to announce the winner of the 2024 John Dewey Prize: Jonathan Strassfeld, Inventing Philosophy's Other: Phenomenology in America (University of Chicago Press, 2022). The John Dewey Prize is a triennial award for the best book on the history of American philosophy, broadly understood. Funded by a generous grant from the John Dewey Foundation,
Announcement: 2024 Dorothy Ross Prize | Society for US Intellectual History
We are pleased to announce the winner of the 2024 Dorothy Ross Prize for the best article in U.S. intellectual history: Tom Arnold-Forster, “Walter Lippmann and Public Opinion,” American Journalism 40:1 (2023): 51-79." This award goes to an emerging scholar, defined as a current graduate student or a scholar within five years of receiving the PhD.
Announcement: 2024 Leo P. Ribuffo Dissertation Prize | Society for US Intellectual History
We are thrilled to announce that the annual Leo P. Ribuffo Dissertation Prize has been awarded to Jacob Anbinder, “Cities of Amber: Antigrowth Politics and the Making of Modern Liberalism." The Society for U.S. Intellectual History established the Leo P. Ribuffo Prize for Best Dissertation in U.S. Intellectual History in 2023. Ribuffo, a revered scholar
Announcement: MIH-USIH Early Career Workshop | Society for US Intellectual History
We are delighted to welcome four scholars to our inaugural Modern Intellectual History-USIH Early Career Workshop. It's organized around three themes: knowledge and belief, archives and intellectual history, and political economy. We are grateful to our workshop leaders, Audrey Wu Clark and Brandon R. Byrd, for leading this fantastic new initiative. Learn more about the workshop participants' scholarship-in-progress below. Jacob
Paul Croce – Democrats in Power to Protesters in Streets: Mutual Prods to Peace | Society for US Intellectual History
Dear Joe Biden-Kamala Harris Administration, Many of your own supporters, Mr. Biden, were wavering in their support, and not just for the age issue. Your administration wears the burdens of liberalism. As a centrist outlook, it can seem wishy-washy. With your own run for the White House, Ms. Harris, and in your association with the
Announcement: S-USIH 2024 Annual Book Prize | Society for US Intellectual History
We are honored to announce that the 2024 S-USIH Annual Book Prize has been awarded to Leslie Butler, Consistent Democracy: The "Woman Question" and Self-Government in Nineteenth-Century America (Oxford University Press, 2023). Honorable Mention is awarded to Barbara D. Savage, Merze Tate: The Global Odyssey of a Black Woman Scholar (Yale University Press, 2023). Huzzah and congrats! We are
“Cold War Tones”: Michael J. Kramer on Ansari’s *The Sound of a Superpower: Musical Americanism and the Cold War* and Gentry’s *What Will I Be: American Music and Cold War Identity* | Society for US Intellectual History
These psalms are a simple and modest affair / Tonal and tuneful and somewhat square / Certain to sicken a stout John Cager / With its tonics and triads in B-flat major. / But there it stands—the result of my pondering / Two long months of avant-garde wandering— / My youngest child, old-fashioned and
Meet the 2024 Henry F. May Fund Fellows | Society for US Intellectual History
Huzzah, historians! We're thrilled to announce the recipients of our Henry F. May Fund Research Fellowships, who will each receive $500 to support their scholarship this summer. Read on to learn about their works in progress. Ashley Everson is a PhD student in Africana Studies at Brown University. Ashley earned her B.A. with honors distinction
“A Cultural Historian’s Call of the Wild”: Paul Croce on Jackson Lears’s *Animal Spirits: The American Pursuit of Vitality from Camp Meeting to Wall Street* | Society for US Intellectual History
This masterful history is wide-ranging both in its coverage and its hybrid form. It offers specialized study of the vitalist tradition, broadly understood, in the modern US and Europe, with display of familiar facets of history on those terms. And as a general text culminating in social commentary, it offers a kind of scholar’s textbook,
Arathi Sriprakash on Arjun Shankar’s *Brown Saviors and Their Others: Race, Caste, Labour, and the Global Politics of Help in India* | Society for US Intellectual History
Over fifteen years ago I conducted an ethnography of NGO-led reforms in primary schools in Karnataka, India – the same region in which Arjun Shankar’s research for Brown Saviors and Their Others takes place. NGOs in India are often led by networks of dominant-caste, urban and diasporic Indian elites who claim to be working for