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Society for US Intellectual History Blog - History
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In Memory of Dorothy, by Howard Brick | Society for US Intellectual History
In Memory of Dorothy Howard Brick Two years ago, for the S-USIH meeting (scheduled for this hotel, the first fully “live” post-pandemic conference for this organization), a group of us had planned a session in Dorothy’s honor—featuring Jim Kloppenberg, Kim Phillips-Fein, Jefferson Cowie, and Dan Geary (what a line-up!!) and intended to comment on and
The Provocations of Dorothy Ross: An Appreciation, by Daniel H. Borus | Society for US Intellectual History
Although I have been identified as a “Dorothy Ross student,” she was not my dissertation adviser. Indeed I never took a class with her. She was my second reader. The second reader is a strange institution and the commitment of second readers to the project vary from those who just want to sign off and
Dorothy Ross by Francois Furstenberg | Society for US Intellectual History
Dorothy Ross I agreed to address two topics this afternoon: Dorothy’s mentorship and her scholarly politics. Inevitably, perhaps, given recent events, my comments have tilted more toward the political. But before I go there, let me say a few words about her mentorship. The first thing to note about Dorothy’s advising is her seriousness. She
S-USIH 2025 CFP: Creativity & Renewal | Society for US Intellectual History
Society for U.S. Intellectual History Call for Proposals The 2025 S-USIH Annual Conference will be held in Detroit, Michigan, on November 6-8, 2025, at the DoubleTree Suites by Hilton Detroit Downtown - Fort Shelby. The theme is “Creativity and Renewal: Art, Ideas, and Culture in Conversation.” Our conference co-chairs are Chloe Hawkey, Paul Murphy, and
#USIH2025 News: Panelist Meetup Page | Society for US Intellectual History
Greetings, USIH friends, old and new! We welcome your proposals for our 2025 conference, to be held November 6-8, 2025, in historic Detroit, Michigan. Submissions are due on 1 May 2025, and you can find the Call for Papers here. Our theme is “Creativity & Renewal,” and we interpret that broadly. Your proposals may focus
Francesco Landolfi on Reiko Hillyer’s *A Wall Is Just a Wall: The Permeability of the Prison in the Twentieth-Century United States* | Society for US Intellectual History
In the history of the modern Western prison system, the treatment of the prison population can inevitably be considered as one of many factors in assessing the level of social status that a civilized society has managed to achieve both beyond and behind prison walls. Prisons, in fact, are never a system completely detached from
Naida García-Crespo on Mónica A. Jiménez’s *Making Never-Never Land: Race and Law in the Creation of Puerto Rico* | Society for US Intellectual History
Mónica A. Jiménez’s Making Never-Never Land: Race and Law in the Creation of Puerto Rico, offers a legal history of Puerto Rico’s colonial relation with the United States (US). The book further attempts to connect Puerto Rico’s colonial status with a history of racist Supreme Court decisions beginning with Johnson v. M’Intosh and ending with
Julie Novkov on Anthony Kreis’s *Rot and Revival: The History of Constitutional Law in American Political Development* | Society for US Intellectual History
Since the late twentieth century, scholars of constitutional law employing the tools of American political development (APD) have argued that understanding constitutional law requires analyzing constitutional development.[1] This agenda both focuses on how courts (including but not limited to the United States Supreme Court) participate as institutions in structuring and limiting the national state and
S-USIH at #AHA2026 | Society for US Intellectual History
Greetings, intellectual historians! We are now accepting proposals for S-USIH sponsored sessions at next year’s American Historical Association meeting. The upcoming conference will be held in Chicago, January 8-11, 2026. We invite all active S-USIH members to submit a panel or roundtable proposal for consideration our AHA liaison, Lauren Lassabe Shepherd (laurenlassabe@gmail.com), by Monday, February 10. 2025. Please
Rei Magosaki on Sonia C. Gomez’s *Picture Bride, War Bride: The Role of Marriage in Shaping Japanese America* | Society for US Intellectual History
In Picture Bride, War Bride: The Role of Marriage in Shaping Japanese America, Sonia C. Gomez (2024) offers a new account of Japanese American immigration history, using gender as a critical axis to challenge established historiography. Much discussion of Japanese immigration to the United States has revolved around the earliest wave of laboring men, whose
Odds and Ends: Final Thoughts on Spiritual Criminals | Society for US Intellectual History
Thus far in this series I have not articulated any critique of Michelle Nickerson’s Spiritual Criminals. One reason why is that these explorations were never meant to be a book review, much less a critical review. I felt no obligation, hence, to hold to a critical approach. My point with the posts was to
“Putting the Culture in the Counterculture”: Michael J. Kramer on Thomas E. Crow’s *The Artist in the Counterculture: Bruce Conner to Mike Kelley and Other Tales from the Edge* | Society for US Intellectual History
Most studies of the 1960s counterculture focus more on the "counter" than the culture. They want to know what did—or did not—make the phenomenon oppositional to the dominant structures of power in American and global life. What were the politics of the counterculture's strange effort to reimagine, and even possibly revolutionize, both self and society
“The Power of Disillusionment: Reflections on History, Adulthood, and Access to Knowledge”: Scott Richard St. Louis on Peter Baldwin’s *Athena Unbound: Why and How Scholarly Knowledge Should Be Free for All* | Society for US Intellectual History
A few months ago, I experienced the joy of celebrating my thirtieth birthday with several friends and loved ones. It was an occasion that brought forth tremendous gratitude from deep inside my heart: for my parents, for my sister, for all the lessons learned with plain luck or hard work or blunt failure. Soon enough,
The Crux of Catholic Political Troubles: Orthodoxy, Unorthodoxy, and Prophecy | Society for US Intellectual History
Michelle Nickerson's Spiritual Criminals demonstrates the ongoing relevance of many of the book's topics to contemporary Catholicism. Some of the following have been added or highlighted by me, but they include: white privilege, church-state relations, Catholic Social Teachings, gender troubles (feminism, masculinity), pro-life politics, abortion, patriotism, individual conscience, the acceptable limits of public activism/protest, and
Sharlene Sinegal-DeCuir on Jeffrey S. Adler’s *Blue-Coated Terror: Jim Crow New Orleans and the Roots of Modern Police Brutality* | Society for US Intellectual History
Blue-Coated Terror: Jim Crow New Orleans and the Roots of Modern Police Brutality explores the early twenty-century roots of modern police brutality. Adler has managed to write a book that is engaging, thought-provoking and timely. In 2020, America was shaken by the brutal reality of police violence against people of color as the world witnessed
Kevin Vallier on Caleb Wellum’s Energizing Neoliberalism | Society for US Intellectual History
Caleb Wellum’s Energizing Neoliberalism offers a new interpretation of how the 1970s energy crises reshaped American political culture. Most historians treat the crisis as a problem of oil shortages or Middle Eastern politics. Wellum sees it differently. He argues that Americans constructed the energy crisis through culture, media, and politics. The crisis was not a
Jennifer Keishin Armstrong on Jennifer S. Clark’s *Producing Feminism: Television Work in the Age of Women’s Liberation* | Society for US Intellectual History
Women’s presence behind the scenes of the U.S. television industry in the 1970s fundamentally changed the way the medium worked, pushing it toward a more feminist agenda. This is what Jennifer S. Clark argues effectively in Producing Feminism: Television Work in the Age of Women’s Liberation. Clark takes readers beyond the glitz of Hollywood and
The Media Raiders: The FBI, Hoover, and the Catholic Left | Society for US Intellectual History
While all anti-Vietnam War activities eventually put a spotlight on reactions by law enforcement, in reading Michelle Nickerson's Spiritual Criminals I was surprised at the extent the Camden 28 action involved the Federal Bureau of Investigation and its Counter-Intelligence Program (COINTELPRO). Historians who work on the 1960s already know about COINTELPRO and how it targeted
Author Meets Critics: Response by Dan Wickberg, Modernism as a Category in American Intellectual History | Society for US Intellectual History
I want to begin with a few comments about Kunal Parker’s The Turn to Process, and especially its relation to my own book, and then turn to some of the thoughtful comments and criticisms from Paul Murphy, Casey Eilbert, and Angus Burgin. My goal is to identify what I think the strengths of my book
Author Meets Critics: Response by Kunal M. Parker | Society for US Intellectual History
Immense thanks to Paul Murphy, Casey Eilbert, and Angus Burgin for their thoughtful engagements with Daniel Wickberg’s A History of American Thought, 1860 – 2000: Thinking the Modern and my own The Turn to Process: American Legal, Political, and Economic Thought, 1870-1970. In this response, I set forth what I hoped to accomplish in The
Author Meets Critics: Angus Burgin, “Whatever Happened to American Thought? Comments on Kunal Parker, The Turn to Process and Daniel Wickberg, A History of Modern Thought, 1860-2000” | Society for US Intellectual History
Kunal Parker’s The Turn to Process and Daniel Wickberg’s A History of American Thought are unusual in the breadth of their scope, offering accounts of the rise and fall of modernism that match the sweep and ambition of some of the great synthetic works from the heyday of American intellectual history. As such, their joint
Author Meets Critics: Casey Eilbert, “The Making of Modernism: Comments on Kunal Parker, The Turn to Process and Daniel Wickberg, A History of Modern Thought, 1860-2000” | Society for US Intellectual History
In these recent works in U.S. intellectual history, Daniel Wickberg and Kunal Parker offer readers thorough histories of the major developments in modern American thought, valuable interpretations of the modernist paradigm and its consequences, and excellent material for thinking about ideas, the contexts that give rise to them, and the processes of ideological change. Daniel
Author Meets Critics: Paul Murphy, “What Are We Talking About When We Talk About Modernism?: Comments on Kunal Parker, The Turn to Process and Daniel Wickberg, A History of Modern Thought, 1860-2000” | Society for US Intellectual History
In 1903, the conservative critic Paul Elmer More noted that two hundred years previously truth was “something fixed and unalterable.” “Religion had been established once for all by a perfect revelation; and as in religion so in culture, the forms of art and literature had received their final form.” However, such certainty existed no more.
Gregg Lee Carter on Alexandra Filindra’s *Race, Rights, and Rifles: The Origins of the NRA and Contemporary Gun Culture* | Society for US Intellectual History
This is an important and well written book on the history and ideological development of the National Rifle Association (NRA), and how the organization has impacted, and ultimately distorted, the proper role of guns in American society. On its face, the NRA’s current ideology might seem critical for both keeping contemporary Americans safe and keeping
Fort Worth Blues, 11/14-15/2024 | Society for US Intellectual History
Months before, when I bought the tickets, I was concerned about the dates and how I would feel. The first was for T Bone Burnett at a local listening room in my Dallas neighborhood called the Kessler Theater, and the second the next night for Leon Bridges and Charley Crockett at Dickie’s Arena, where they
CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS: S-USIH 2025 PRIZES | Society for US Intellectual History
Hello, scholars! We are proud to sponsor several prizes honoring your scholarship in U.S. intellectual history. Please see below for the 2025 awards and note that all submissions are due by 1 March 2025. Should you have any questions, please contact us at susihistory@gmail.com. Thank you. S-USIH 2024 Annual Book Award The Society
Kevin J. Mumford on Jennifer Dominguez Jones’s *Ambivalent Affinities: A Political History of Blackness and Homosexuality After World War II* | Society for US Intellectual History
Over the past several decades, the field of LGBTQ studies has exploded beyond far beyond what anyone had expected or even thought possible. Queer studies has established itself and produced numbers of critical interventions and excellent scholarship. If there is a point of lag or conceptual fault, it is the failure to address the problem
Priscila Dorella on Cecilia Márquez’s *Making the Latino South: A History of Racial* | Society for US Intellectual History
The history of the southern United States is so deeply defined by racial conflicts between whites and blacks that the social, political and economic importance of Latinos, a population that has grown dramatically in the region over the last seven decades, has often been overlooked. Cecilia Márquez, assistant professor of Latino Studies at Duke University,
Catholic Troubles with Feminism: Pro-life Politics, the Erotics of Activism, and the Camden 28, Entry #2 | Society for US Intellectual History
The next time that feminism arises in the index of Spiritual Criminals is related to abortion and the aftermath of the Camden 28 trial (p. 189). In the penultimate and final chapters, Nickerson begins to take a broader view of everyone and every institution involved. She writes: A split between feminists and the Catholic vanguard
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