Susan Pearson's Book Wins Merle Curti Award

The blogging staff of the USIH blog and the members of the S-USIH would like to extend our warmest congratulations to Susan J. Pearson, whose outstanding book The Rights of the Defenseless: Protecting Animals and Children in Gilded Age America (U. of Chicago, 2011) won the 2012 Merle Curti Award in Intellectual History.

The publisher's website offers a brief summary of this brilliantly-conceived text, and includes a few of the many well-deserved accolades the book garnered from early reviewers.  Here, for example, is Dan Wickberg's early assessment of  Pearson's important work:

The Rights of the Defenseless is much more than an examination of the development of specific policies by humane societies, more than a case study of the emergence of Progressive era reform as it applied to the protection of children and animals.  Rather, Susan Pearson uses the very specific concern with these two forms of dependency to explore the definition of rights in liberal discourse; the boundary between person and animal in modern thought and practice; the symbolic configuration of self and society in nineteenth-century political culture; the emergence of a modern mode of linking feeling to reason to action. I do not think it is too much to say that this book will redefine the understanding of the humanitarian sensibility and its place in modern American culture. This is history as an act of the moral imagination in the very best sense.

Pearson's history is pathbreaking indeed, and we are all pleased that the 2012 Merle Curti Award Committee recognized her truly outstanding achievement. 

Susan was not able to accept this honor in person at the 2012 OAH meeting in Milwaukee. She was busy with another outstanding achievement:  she was having a baby.  So double congratulations to Susan and her lovely family, including especially her husband, Michael Kramer, a frequent, smart, savvy commenter on this blog.  I believe they have set the bar for the Best Week Ever for intellectual historians.

David Sehat's Book Wins Turner Award

Our hearty congratulations go to David Sehat, whose book The Myth of American Religious Freedom has been honored with the 2012 Frederick Jackson Turner Award.

Last spring the USIH blog hosted a roundtable about David's book, with contributions from Daniel K. Williams, Andrew Hartman, Raymond J. Haberski, and Christopher Hickman.

A former blogger for USIH, David currently serves as the Chairman of the S-USIH 2012 Conference Committee.  Please come to New York this November and offer him your congratulations in person.

We are delighted that David's work has been honored with this prestigious award.

Bleg: OAH Election Ballot Question (Time Sensitive)

I'm in the midst of filling out my 2011 OAH Election Ballot. I've selected my Executive and Nominating Board candidates, but have hit a roadblock with the constitutional change issue (slate #7). There are 11 proposed changes. I think I understand all but one of the changes. The problem happens to be change #1. Here's the text (bolds mine):

------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 ▪ Article III, Section 1 — Membership

Current Wording: Last sentence: “All classes of membership are eligible to participate in the affairs of the Organization.”

Proposed Change: Delete entire sentence.

Rationale: While members can participate in the affairs of the organization, there are different levels of membership therefore different levels of participation permitted. These levels of participation are spelled out in documents related to membership benefits and since these benefit levels change periodically, they should not be included in the OAH Constitution.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

This proposed change seems too broad. My concern lies in the vagueness (or not) of the phrase "levels of participation." Levels of benefits I understand, but participation? Is the OAH contemplating the restriction of certain issues (i.e. "affairs of the organization") from the membership at large? It seems clear to me that this is a desired future option. What are these issues? Why should they be restricted from participation by all future members? It seems to me that the original sentence was purposely included in the Constitution to force the leadership team into a default democratic position. The original sentence forces the leadership, if in doubt, to present things (i.e. affairs) to the membership for at large consideration.

Finally, "levels of participation" are often determined by economics (e.g. personal and institutional). I understand that one's personal ideological investment does have some correlation with a willingness to outlay dollars. But in tough economic times that willingness is hampered by external factors.

Perhaps I'm being overly alarmist? Or maybe I'm overly sensitive (as a contingent employee) to the economics of participation?

What say you? Despite the validity and sensibility of the other ten issues, until I hear a solid argument to the contrary, I'm inclined to vote NO on the change. - TL

Bleg: OAH Election Ballot Question (Time Sensitive)

I'm in the midst of filling out my 2011 OAH Election Ballot. I've selected my Executive and Nominating Board candidates, but have hit a roadblock with the constitutional change issue (slate #7). There are 11 proposed changes. I think I understand all but one of the changes. The problem happens to be change #1. Here's the text (bolds mine):

------------------------------------------------------------------------
1 ▪ Article III, Section 1 — Membership

Current Wording: Last sentence: “All classes of membership are eligible to participate in the affairs of the Organization.”

Proposed Change: Delete entire sentence.

Rationale: While members can participate in the affairs of the organization, there are different levels of membership therefore different levels of participation permitted. These levels of participation are spelled out in documents related to membership benefits and since these benefit levels change periodically, they should not be included in the OAH Constitution.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

This proposed change seems too broad. My concern lies in the vagueness (or not) of the phrase "levels of participation." Levels of benefits I understand, but participation? Is the OAH contemplating the restriction of certain issues (i.e. "affairs of the organization") from the membership at large? It seems clear to me that this is a desired future option. What are these issues? Why should they be restricted from participation by all future members? It seems to me that the original sentence was purposely included in the Constitution to force the leadership team into a default democratic position. The original sentence forces the leadership, if in doubt, to present things (i.e. affairs) to the membership for at large consideration.

Finally, "levels of participation" are often determined by economics (e.g. personal and institutional). I understand that one's personal ideological investment does have some correlation with a willingness to outlay dollars. But in tough economic times that willingness is hampered by external factors.

Perhaps I'm being overly alarmist? Or maybe I'm overly sensitive (as a contingent employee) to the economics of participation?

What say you? Despite the validity and sensibility of the other ten issues, until I hear a solid argument to the contrary, I'm inclined to vote NO on the change. - TL

Research Issues: JAH's RSO Function And New Works On U.S. Intellectual History

If you don't already take advantage of your JAH subscription to receive what's called an RSO update (Recent Scholarship Online), I would encourage you to do so.

Below is a selection of new books and articles on intellectual history received by JAH since the last RSO update in March. I say "received" because not all of the works were published in 2010. This list has been thinned out a bit because I deleted sublistings of individual contributions from the Alice Kessler-Harris and Maurizio Vaudagna edited collection.

You can set up your RSO to screen by categories and keywords. Here are mine (reflective of my ongoing projects):

Categories: Education; Intellectual; Mass Communications; Print Culture; Religion; Social and Cultural; Midwest
Keywords: Mortimer Adler, Mortimer J. Adler, Robert Hutchins, great books*, Paideia, Clifton Fadiman, John Erskine

I used to scan the reviews and books received sections of JAH for new scholarship. Thanks to RSO, now I can simply read the reviews that interest me rather than worry about missing a new title because I don't have the metadata/LOC categories. Otherwise, how would I have known---based on the titles alone---that the books by Bilder et al., Hunt, Kim, Mirra, and Weaver held forth on matters related to intellectual history?

------------------------------
E-mail Update for April 2010
Category: "Intellectual"

Baker, Lee D., Anthropology and the Racial Politics of Culture. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. xiv, 277 pp. Cloth, $79.95, isbn 978-0-8223-4686-9. Paper, $22.95, isbn 978-0-8223-4698-2.) Document Type: Book
Categories: African American; American Indian; Intellectual; Race

Bilder, Mary Sarah, Maeva Marcus, and R. Kent Newmyer, eds., Blackstone in America: Selected Essays of Kathryn Preyer. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. xiv, 287 pp. $85.00, isbn 978-0-521-49087-0.) Document Type: Book
Categories: Gender, Masculinity, and Femininity; Intellectual; Legal and Constitutional; Women

Crowder, Ralph L., “The Historical Context and Political Significance of Harlem’s Street Scholar Community,” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, 34 (Jan. 2010), 34–71. Document Type: Article
Categories: African American; East; Education; Intellectual; Social and Cultural; Urban and Suburban

Gooding-Williams, Robert, In the Shadow of Du Bois: Afro-Modern Political Thought in America. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009. xii, 350 pp. $35.00, isbn 978-0-674-03526-3.) Document Type: Book
Categories: African American; Intellectual; Politics; Race

Hunt, Bruce J., Pursuing Power and Light: Technology and Physics from James Watt to Albert Einstein. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. x, 182 pp. Cloth, $45.00, isbn 978-0-8018-9358-2. Paper, $20.00, isbn 978-0-8018-9359-9.) Document Type: Book
Categories: Business and Economics; Intellectual; Science and Technology

James, Samuel, “Louis Mink, ‘Postmodernism,’ and the Vocation of Historiography,” Modern Intellectual History, 7 (April 2010), 151–84. Document Type: Article
Categories: Intellectual; Theory and Methodology

Kessler-Harris, Alice, and Maurizio Vaudagna, eds., Democracy and Social Rights in the “Two Wests.” (Turin: Otto, 2009. ii, 351 pp. Paper, €25,00, isbn 978-88-95285-16-0.) Document Type: Book
Categories: Intellectual; Politics; Transnational and Comparative

Kester, Scott J., The Haunted Philosophe: James Madison, Republicanism, and Slavery. (Lanham: Lexington, 2008. x, 132 pp. $55.00, isbn 978-0-7391-2174-0.)Document Type: Book
Categories: Intellectual; Politics; Revolutionary and Early National

Kim, Jin Hee, “1930–40 Nyundae Miguk gisikineui daejung munwha insik” (New York intellectuals and mass culture in the 1930s and 1940s), Mikuthak Nonjip/Korean Journal of American Studies, 40 (no. 3, 2008), 5–38. In Korean. Document Type: Article
Categories: East; Intellectual; Social and Cultural; Transnational and Comparative; Urban and Suburban

Mirra, Carl, The Admirable Radical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 1945–1970. (Kent: Kent State University Press, 2010. xvi, 224 pp. $34.95, isbn 978-1-60635-051-5.) Document Type: Book
Categories: African American; Biography; Education; Intellectual

Martínez, David, “Pulling Down the Clouds: The O’odham Intellectual Tradition during the ‘Time of Famine,’” American Indian Quarterly, 34 (Winter 2010), 1–32. Document Type: Article
Categories: American Indian; Education; Intellectual; Print Culture; Religion; West

Pianko, Noam, “‘The True Liberalism of Zionism’: Horace Kallen, Jewish Nationalism, and the Limits of American Pluralism,” American Jewish History, 94 (Dec. 2008), 299–329. Document Type: Article
Categories: Biography; Ethnicity; Intellectual; International Relations; Jewish

Weaver, Gina Marie, Ideologies of Forgetting: Rape in the Vietnam War. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010. xviii, 198 pp. Cloth, $75.00, isbn 978-1-4384-2999-1. Paper, $24.95, isbn 978-1-4384-2998-4.) Document Type: Book
Categories: Crime and Violence; Intellectual; Military; Print Culture; Vietnam; Women

Research Issues: JAH's RSO Function And New Works On U.S. Intellectual History

If you don't already take advantage of your JAH subscription to receive what's called an RSO update (Recent Scholarship Online), I would encourage you to do so.

Below is a selection of new books and articles on intellectual history received by JAH since the last RSO update in March. I say "received" because not all of the works were published in 2010. This list has been thinned out a bit because I deleted sublistings of individual contributions from the Alice Kessler-Harris and Maurizio Vaudagna edited collection.

You can set up your RSO to screen by categories and keywords. Here are mine (reflective of my ongoing projects):

Categories: Education; Intellectual; Mass Communications; Print Culture; Religion; Social and Cultural; Midwest
Keywords: Mortimer Adler, Mortimer J. Adler, Robert Hutchins, great books*, Paideia, Clifton Fadiman, John Erskine

I used to scan the reviews and books received sections of JAH for new scholarship. Thanks to RSO, now I can simply read the reviews that interest me rather than worry about missing a new title because I don't have the metadata/LOC categories. Otherwise, how would I have known---based on the titles alone---that the books by Bilder et al., Hunt, Kim, Mirra, and Weaver held forth on matters related to intellectual history?

------------------------------
E-mail Update for April 2010
Category: "Intellectual"

Baker, Lee D., Anthropology and the Racial Politics of Culture. (Durham: Duke University Press, 2010. xiv, 277 pp. Cloth, $79.95, isbn 978-0-8223-4686-9. Paper, $22.95, isbn 978-0-8223-4698-2.) Document Type: Book
Categories: African American; American Indian; Intellectual; Race

Bilder, Mary Sarah, Maeva Marcus, and R. Kent Newmyer, eds., Blackstone in America: Selected Essays of Kathryn Preyer. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009. xiv, 287 pp. $85.00, isbn 978-0-521-49087-0.) Document Type: Book
Categories: Gender, Masculinity, and Femininity; Intellectual; Legal and Constitutional; Women

Crowder, Ralph L., “The Historical Context and Political Significance of Harlem’s Street Scholar Community,” Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, 34 (Jan. 2010), 34–71. Document Type: Article
Categories: African American; East; Education; Intellectual; Social and Cultural; Urban and Suburban

Gooding-Williams, Robert, In the Shadow of Du Bois: Afro-Modern Political Thought in America. (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009. xii, 350 pp. $35.00, isbn 978-0-674-03526-3.) Document Type: Book
Categories: African American; Intellectual; Politics; Race

Hunt, Bruce J., Pursuing Power and Light: Technology and Physics from James Watt to Albert Einstein. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010. x, 182 pp. Cloth, $45.00, isbn 978-0-8018-9358-2. Paper, $20.00, isbn 978-0-8018-9359-9.) Document Type: Book
Categories: Business and Economics; Intellectual; Science and Technology

James, Samuel, “Louis Mink, ‘Postmodernism,’ and the Vocation of Historiography,” Modern Intellectual History, 7 (April 2010), 151–84. Document Type: Article
Categories: Intellectual; Theory and Methodology

Kessler-Harris, Alice, and Maurizio Vaudagna, eds., Democracy and Social Rights in the “Two Wests.” (Turin: Otto, 2009. ii, 351 pp. Paper, €25,00, isbn 978-88-95285-16-0.) Document Type: Book
Categories: Intellectual; Politics; Transnational and Comparative

Kester, Scott J., The Haunted Philosophe: James Madison, Republicanism, and Slavery. (Lanham: Lexington, 2008. x, 132 pp. $55.00, isbn 978-0-7391-2174-0.)Document Type: Book
Categories: Intellectual; Politics; Revolutionary and Early National

Kim, Jin Hee, “1930–40 Nyundae Miguk gisikineui daejung munwha insik” (New York intellectuals and mass culture in the 1930s and 1940s), Mikuthak Nonjip/Korean Journal of American Studies, 40 (no. 3, 2008), 5–38. In Korean. Document Type: Article
Categories: East; Intellectual; Social and Cultural; Transnational and Comparative; Urban and Suburban

Mirra, Carl, The Admirable Radical: Staughton Lynd and Cold War Dissent, 1945–1970. (Kent: Kent State University Press, 2010. xvi, 224 pp. $34.95, isbn 978-1-60635-051-5.) Document Type: Book
Categories: African American; Biography; Education; Intellectual

Martínez, David, “Pulling Down the Clouds: The O’odham Intellectual Tradition during the ‘Time of Famine,’” American Indian Quarterly, 34 (Winter 2010), 1–32. Document Type: Article
Categories: American Indian; Education; Intellectual; Print Culture; Religion; West

Pianko, Noam, “‘The True Liberalism of Zionism’: Horace Kallen, Jewish Nationalism, and the Limits of American Pluralism,” American Jewish History, 94 (Dec. 2008), 299–329. Document Type: Article
Categories: Biography; Ethnicity; Intellectual; International Relations; Jewish

Weaver, Gina Marie, Ideologies of Forgetting: Rape in the Vietnam War. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2010. xviii, 198 pp. Cloth, $75.00, isbn 978-1-4384-2999-1. Paper, $24.95, isbn 978-1-4384-2998-4.) Document Type: Book
Categories: Crime and Violence; Intellectual; Military; Print Culture; Vietnam; Women

Cementing My Ignorance In Print: An Addendum To My Recent Thinking On Transnational Historiography

Last month I unhesitatingly promoted a review essay of mine at USIH. In that essay, as well as my prior work here on transnationalism (particularly in November 2008 and the January just past), I cited OAH and AHA work on the topic. Sadly, however, I overlooked this Perspectives on History piece from December 2008. But it's not just the article; it's the content. So my situation gets worse.

Perspectives detailed the work of a summer institute on transnational topics for college teachers held in 2008. The article also noted that a 2005 institute gathering predated the one last summer. The Perspectives essay publicized, furthermore, a 2008 publication edited by Peter Stearns and Noralee Frankel, titled "Globalizing American History: The AHA Guide to Re-Imagining the U.S. Survey Course." Through the link you can purchase the 128-page pamphlet for $15. [FYI: Rob Townsend of the AHA informed me that a key part of the pamphlet is at this link.]

Prior to a few weeks ago I was ignorant of the AHA pamphlet, and therefore neglected it in my Councilor review. This is irritating---and humbling. I aimed for comprehensiveness in my write-up, at least from the late 1990s going forward. But somehow I missed a publication from one of the largest historical societies in the United States. Yep. Since the AHA pamphlet addresses teaching, it likely changes my perspective on the place of America on the World Stage (AWS) in the literature on transnationalism.

I haven't yet seen the AHA publication. But if it incorporates more practical advice on teaching, then it provides a concrete alternative to AWS---an alternative I explicitly called for in The Councilor review. The pamphlet might also indicate a deeper penetration of transnationalism into secondary education than I might have imagined.

The Perspectives article also enlarges the cast of characters cited in my review. I claimed that Thomas Bender was a kind of de facto leader of the transnational turn. He is still clearly important, but now I must recommend that interested parties explore the AHA conferees to sift who played key roles in the two institutes. It appears, on the surface, that Carl Guarneri and John Gillis are more prominent than I realized. This makes sense as Guarneri was mentioned in the endnotes of a few of the AWS essays.

In sum, I'm ashamed. I'll have to read the AHA pamphlet to discern whether its contents change my interpretation of the transnational turn, my prescriptions for future endeavors, or both. In the meantime, don't take my word for it. It appears I've done what every historian fears: cemented my ignorance in print. - TL

Cementing My Ignorance In Print: An Addendum To My Recent Thinking On Transnational Historiography

Last month I unhesitatingly promoted a review essay of mine at USIH. In that essay, as well as my prior work here on transnationalism (particularly in November 2008 and the January just past), I cited OAH and AHA work on the topic. Sadly, however, I overlooked this Perspectives on History piece from December 2008. But it's not just the article; it's the content. So my situation gets worse.

Perspectives detailed the work of a summer institute on transnational topics for college teachers held in 2008. The article also noted that a 2005 institute gathering predated the one last summer. The Perspectives essay publicized, furthermore, a 2008 publication edited by Peter Stearns and Noralee Frankel, titled "Globalizing American History: The AHA Guide to Re-Imagining the U.S. Survey Course." Through the link you can purchase the 128-page pamphlet for $15. [FYI: Rob Townsend of the AHA informed me that a key part of the pamphlet is at this link.]

Prior to a few weeks ago I was ignorant of the AHA pamphlet, and therefore neglected it in my Councilor review. This is irritating---and humbling. I aimed for comprehensiveness in my write-up, at least from the late 1990s going forward. But somehow I missed a publication from one of the largest historical societies in the United States. Yep. Since the AHA pamphlet addresses teaching, it likely changes my perspective on the place of America on the World Stage (AWS) in the literature on transnationalism.

I haven't yet seen the AHA publication. But if it incorporates more practical advice on teaching, then it provides a concrete alternative to AWS---an alternative I explicitly called for in The Councilor review. The pamphlet might also indicate a deeper penetration of transnationalism into secondary education than I might have imagined.

The Perspectives article also enlarges the cast of characters cited in my review. I claimed that Thomas Bender was a kind of de facto leader of the transnational turn. He is still clearly important, but now I must recommend that interested parties explore the AHA conferees to sift who played key roles in the two institutes. It appears, on the surface, that Carl Guarneri and John Gillis are more prominent than I realized. This makes sense as Guarneri was mentioned in the endnotes of a few of the AWS essays.

In sum, I'm ashamed. I'll have to read the AHA pamphlet to discern whether its contents change my interpretation of the transnational turn, my prescriptions for future endeavors, or both. In the meantime, don't take my word for it. It appears I've done what every historian fears: cemented my ignorance in print. - TL