X-post: Michael Kramer Reflects On The Third Annual USIH Conference

[First posted at Michael Kramer's weblog, Culture Rover, on Oct. 28, 2010, this essay reflects on the overall meaning of the Third Annual USIH Conference. Michael attended and presented a paper, and has subsequently contributed to the thread below on the event's final plenary. Michael works at Northwestern University.]
----------------------------------------------

Instituting Intellectual History: the ins and outs of academic intellectual history.


[Christopher Lasch]

No ideas but in things. — William Carlos Williams

----------------------------------------------

At the closing panel of the third annual U.S. Intellectual History conference, whose theme was “Intellectuals and Their Publics,” the ghost of Christopher Lasch very much haunted the halls. A number of former graduate students, and even Lasch’s own daughter, delivered eloquent, forceful talks in response to the question “Intellectual History for What?” They urged colleagues and students to work not only as specialized scholars, but also as cultural and social critics.

But a question from a younger colleague in the audience revealed an underlying tension at the conference. The question was along the lines of (I paraphrase): is the historical moment for intellectual historians to serve as cultural critics and public intellectuals a la Lasch over? Or, is the “intellectual as a social type” no more?

There was a sense in which the question was almost a rhetorical one, an answer to it less crucial than its underlying point. Which was that while established scholars might hunger to reach beyond academe, speaking from the podium to urge themselves and their fellow specialists to address broader public audiences, or to dive promiscuously, as George Cotkin put it, into what David Steigerwald called “the play of ideas across time,” many younger scholars were perhaps there for more narrow reasons of professional accreditation in an academic job market that is so oversupplied that it is almost nonexistent, particularly in intellectual history. Those with security within academia longed to escape it for something less institutionalized, while those outside the gates (or within them, but marginalized) longed for institutional (and economic!) validation.

Of course, the lines between these two longings—to reach broader publics, on the one hand, and to secure positions in the historical profession, on the other—were blurry. Both established and younger scholars at the conference danced between the two. James Kloppenberg’s keynote speech, for instance, focused on the intellectual biography of Barack Obama to explain the deeper history behind the strange paradox of how the President is reviled on the right while, at the same time, met with such intense disappointment on the left.

Like many of the presentations at the conference, Kloppenberg’s talk drew upon his intellectual history “chops” to speak to contemporary political matters. For Kloppenberg, Obama’s own intellectual history provided insight into this enigmatic man. The President’s commitments to a pragmatist’s liberal vision of the United States’s democratic traditions—which turn up in Obama’s books and own education—temper his rhetoric and keep him focused on long-term social improvement while also allowing him to resist the polarizations of degraded contemporary political theater.

But despite the evidence in this marvelous keynote of the possibility that historians might move between specialized academic labor and a broader public culture, the tensions between getting out there into the world and getting in there into the academy lingered. Perhaps when it comes to the study of ideas, it’s still about the economy, stupid? Maybe. There was a sense that the tensions raised by the sharp question in the closing minutes of the conference were less about intellectual issues than institutional and economic ones. If, as the question suggested, the cultural critic of the twentieth-century is no more, if the intellectual as social type is dead, then what next for intellectual history as a public as well as a narrowly-professional concern?

George Cotkin proposed that he felt liberated to write adventurous intellectual history because of his position at a non-research university, but even those kind of academic jobs are few and far between these days, and the oversupply of able candidates for them is startling. So it is true, as Wilfred McClay pointed out, that the study of ideas remains vital both inside and outside academia even if the role of intellectual historians continues to be imperiled. But as Casey Blake essentially declared in his closing remarks, the research university may be dead for pursuing a true and only intellectual history. If civic education, teaching, and writing are still to be part of intellectual life, and intellectual historians are to participate fully in them, what institutional forms, then, should intellectual history work take? How should ideas play across time if there is no safety net below them?

Of course, there never has been a safety net, really. Both within the professional field of history and in the broad public beyond it, ideas still grow, blossom, go to seed, and bear fruit again with abundance. Blake mentioned the website The New Inquiry as an example of a new and hopeful concentration of intellectual energy, and rightly so. But is The New Inquiry an institution in the economic sense? Can it provide the sustenance necessary to sustain the intellect? What will provide the livelihood for lively intellectual engagement?

These institutional and economic questions for the life of the mind have always been fretful ones. There was no golden age for intellectuals in America, even when we look back nostalgically on the burgeoning fields of the Cold War research university or peer through the mists into the unkempt gardens of Greenwich Village or Harlem Renaissance bohemians. Nor, for that matter is today as bleak as it sometimes seems. And even though the current pressures are for the work of public intellectuals to be “relevant” and “do something,” one can be heartened by David Steigerwald’s assertion at the final session that the main reason to pursue intellectual history is not that studying ideas somehow exerts “resistance” or “oppositionality,” but rather that it is, simply put, dignified.

Dignity is something to ponder, and perhaps even something into which we can dig our roots. Dignity constitutes a kind of public act. And it can be a fertile emotion. But this dignity needs support. One task that the U.S. Intellectual History conference, once a blog, now growing into an organization, might address is the intellectual groundwork needed to foster a more expansive institutional space for the life of the mind.

Publics are atmospheric and amorphous. Intellectuals have and will continue to be resourceful in their cultivation. And those ideas, wherever they sprout, will remain hearty. The issue isn’t extinction, it’s robustness. The more we can eat, sleep, and breathe, the more we can eat, sleep, and breathe intellectual history.

So the question posed at the end of the conference really leads to two questions. First, in a world in which history still matters (see the recent uses of the past by Glenn Beck and others), what kind of new structures can make for a less shrill and more intellectual study of ideas? Second, if not the research university as it has existed for academic intellectual history, then what? Websites and social networks? Markets or state-run institutions or non-profit think-tanks or what?

Put another way, the question might be: how do we better institute intellectual history without institutionalizing it?

X-post: Michael Kramer Reflects On The Third Annual USIH Conference

[First posted at Michael Kramer's weblog, Culture Rover, on Oct. 28, 2010, this essay reflects on the overall meaning of the Third Annual USIH Conference. Michael attended and presented a paper, and has subsequently contributed to the thread below on the event's final plenary. Michael works at Northwestern University.]
----------------------------------------------

Instituting Intellectual History: the ins and outs of academic intellectual history.


[Christopher Lasch]

No ideas but in things. — William Carlos Williams

----------------------------------------------

At the closing panel of the third annual U.S. Intellectual History conference, whose theme was “Intellectuals and Their Publics,” the ghost of Christopher Lasch very much haunted the halls. A number of former graduate students, and even Lasch’s own daughter, delivered eloquent, forceful talks in response to the question “Intellectual History for What?” They urged colleagues and students to work not only as specialized scholars, but also as cultural and social critics.

But a question from a younger colleague in the audience revealed an underlying tension at the conference. The question was along the lines of (I paraphrase): is the historical moment for intellectual historians to serve as cultural critics and public intellectuals a la Lasch over? Or, is the “intellectual as a social type” no more?

There was a sense in which the question was almost a rhetorical one, an answer to it less crucial than its underlying point. Which was that while established scholars might hunger to reach beyond academe, speaking from the podium to urge themselves and their fellow specialists to address broader public audiences, or to dive promiscuously, as George Cotkin put it, into what David Steigerwald called “the play of ideas across time,” many younger scholars were perhaps there for more narrow reasons of professional accreditation in an academic job market that is so oversupplied that it is almost nonexistent, particularly in intellectual history. Those with security within academia longed to escape it for something less institutionalized, while those outside the gates (or within them, but marginalized) longed for institutional (and economic!) validation.

Of course, the lines between these two longings—to reach broader publics, on the one hand, and to secure positions in the historical profession, on the other—were blurry. Both established and younger scholars at the conference danced between the two. James Kloppenberg’s keynote speech, for instance, focused on the intellectual biography of Barack Obama to explain the deeper history behind the strange paradox of how the President is reviled on the right while, at the same time, met with such intense disappointment on the left.

Like many of the presentations at the conference, Kloppenberg’s talk drew upon his intellectual history “chops” to speak to contemporary political matters. For Kloppenberg, Obama’s own intellectual history provided insight into this enigmatic man. The President’s commitments to a pragmatist’s liberal vision of the United States’s democratic traditions—which turn up in Obama’s books and own education—temper his rhetoric and keep him focused on long-term social improvement while also allowing him to resist the polarizations of degraded contemporary political theater.

But despite the evidence in this marvelous keynote of the possibility that historians might move between specialized academic labor and a broader public culture, the tensions between getting out there into the world and getting in there into the academy lingered. Perhaps when it comes to the study of ideas, it’s still about the economy, stupid? Maybe. There was a sense that the tensions raised by the sharp question in the closing minutes of the conference were less about intellectual issues than institutional and economic ones. If, as the question suggested, the cultural critic of the twentieth-century is no more, if the intellectual as social type is dead, then what next for intellectual history as a public as well as a narrowly-professional concern?

George Cotkin proposed that he felt liberated to write adventurous intellectual history because of his position at a non-research university, but even those kind of academic jobs are few and far between these days, and the oversupply of able candidates for them is startling. So it is true, as Wilfred McClay pointed out, that the study of ideas remains vital both inside and outside academia even if the role of intellectual historians continues to be imperiled. But as Casey Blake essentially declared in his closing remarks, the research university may be dead for pursuing a true and only intellectual history. If civic education, teaching, and writing are still to be part of intellectual life, and intellectual historians are to participate fully in them, what institutional forms, then, should intellectual history work take? How should ideas play across time if there is no safety net below them?

Of course, there never has been a safety net, really. Both within the professional field of history and in the broad public beyond it, ideas still grow, blossom, go to seed, and bear fruit again with abundance. Blake mentioned the website The New Inquiry as an example of a new and hopeful concentration of intellectual energy, and rightly so. But is The New Inquiry an institution in the economic sense? Can it provide the sustenance necessary to sustain the intellect? What will provide the livelihood for lively intellectual engagement?

These institutional and economic questions for the life of the mind have always been fretful ones. There was no golden age for intellectuals in America, even when we look back nostalgically on the burgeoning fields of the Cold War research university or peer through the mists into the unkempt gardens of Greenwich Village or Harlem Renaissance bohemians. Nor, for that matter is today as bleak as it sometimes seems. And even though the current pressures are for the work of public intellectuals to be “relevant” and “do something,” one can be heartened by David Steigerwald’s assertion at the final session that the main reason to pursue intellectual history is not that studying ideas somehow exerts “resistance” or “oppositionality,” but rather that it is, simply put, dignified.

Dignity is something to ponder, and perhaps even something into which we can dig our roots. Dignity constitutes a kind of public act. And it can be a fertile emotion. But this dignity needs support. One task that the U.S. Intellectual History conference, once a blog, now growing into an organization, might address is the intellectual groundwork needed to foster a more expansive institutional space for the life of the mind.

Publics are atmospheric and amorphous. Intellectuals have and will continue to be resourceful in their cultivation. And those ideas, wherever they sprout, will remain hearty. The issue isn’t extinction, it’s robustness. The more we can eat, sleep, and breathe, the more we can eat, sleep, and breathe intellectual history.

So the question posed at the end of the conference really leads to two questions. First, in a world in which history still matters (see the recent uses of the past by Glenn Beck and others), what kind of new structures can make for a less shrill and more intellectual study of ideas? Second, if not the research university as it has existed for academic intellectual history, then what? Websites and social networks? Markets or state-run institutions or non-profit think-tanks or what?

Put another way, the question might be: how do we better institute intellectual history without institutionalizing it?

The Kloppenberg Plenary: Obama's (Controversial?) Intellectual Biography

Our Third Annual USIH Conference almost received a direct reference in Patricia Cohen's review of James T. Kloppenberg's newest book, Reading Obama: Dreams, Hopes, and the American Political Tradition (Princeton Press, 2010). Here are her two near misses (bolds mine): (1) "In New York City last week to give a standing-room-only lecture about his forthcoming intellectual biography... ." and (2) "Those who heard Mr. Kloppenberg present his argument at a conference on intellectual history at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center responded with prolonged applause."

The USIH omission is a shame because I'm pretty sure I remember Kloppenberg saying in the plenary that his book was released that same day, October 22. The article says "on Sunday," but it is unclear whether Cohen meant this coming Sunday (Oct. 31) or the Sunday after the conference (Oct. 24). In any case, I guess we'll have to wait 'til next year on our conference's first direct NYT appearance. C'est la vie.

We can take some pride, however, in the fact that Cohen quoted from one of our own: Andrew Hartman. Here are her two references to him:

(1) "The way he traced Obama’s intellectual influences was fascinating for us, given that Obama’s academic background seems so similar to ours," said Andrew Hartman, a historian at Illinois State University who helped organize the conference.



(2) "There seemed to be skepticism regarding whether Obama’s intellectual background actually translated into policies that the mostly left-leaning audience could get behind," Mr. Hartman said. "Several audience members, myself included, probably view Obama the president as a centrist like Clinton rather than a progressive intellectual as painted by Kloppenberg."

Andrew deserves the credit for the "standing-room-only" crowd. The plenary was held in the Segal Theatre, and thirty-five seats were available both on the right and left sides of the room. Along with the nineteen standing in the back of the room (which included me), I counted roughly 90 people attending. I round up to 90 because I could not see everyone around the columns, and only noticed a random seat or two empty in the chairs.

The book review fairly summarizes Kloppenberg's talk. I was pleased to see two specific things cited. First, Kloppenberg emphasized at the start of his talk that Obama's intellectual development occurred in relation to three key themes, or "matrices" (a term left out by Cohen but used by him): (a) the history of American democracy, (b) the ongoing development of the philosophy of pragmatism, and finally (c) the history of the intellectual (and social and cultural) upheavals of the 1970s-1990s. Cohen presents all three of these themes in the tenth paragraph of her piece, or roughly half-way through.

Second, I was also happy to see this humorous line from the talk make into Cohen's write up (bolds mine):

Conservatives who argue that Mr. Obama is a socialist or an anti-colonialist (as Dinesh D’Souza does in his book “The Roots of Obama’s Rage”) are far off the mark, [Kloppenberg] said. “Adams and Jefferson were the only anti-colonialists whom Obama has been affected by,” he told the audience in New York. “He has a profound love of America.”

Although I liked seeing those two references, there were some further details Kloppenberg relayed in relation to his three key themes. When he discussed the upheavals of the Culture Wars, he stressed the theme--and the tension---between "universality and particularity." He asserted that Obama absorbed the lessons of Thomas Kuhn, Clifford Geertz, and John Rawls in relation to creating "provisional fixed points" and "useful fictions." In other words, Kloppenberg sees Obama as incorporating the inherent, contingent nature of pragmatism in his thinking about policy and the culture wars. Obama attempts to undercut the passion of ideological thinking by seeing phenomenological truths rooted in events and episodes.

There is no denying the relativism of this philosophical approach, but Kloppenberg did not specify in his talk whether that framework permeated ~all~ aspects of Obama's life (e.g. religion), or just his political philosophy. If the former, then conservatives of all stripes will jump on Kloppenberg's book as proof of Obama's radical leftism, or at least of his lack of deep roots in the long Western tradition (i.e. transcendent truths, achievement of pure objectivity, etc.). And Kloppenberg's explicit reference to Nietzsche as being a part of Obama's intellectual history will push another corner of cultural critics, particularly the Bloomian/Straussian crowd, into apoplexy. I must say that though Kloppenberg made that connection, he did not specify exactly where---in the talk at least---Nietzsche directly entered Obama's story.

One could counter the relativism charge in relation to Obama's political philosophy by citing the (liberal) historicism of Obama's constitutional thinking. Cohen sets this up as the now familiar "living" versus "dead" constitutional philosophies. Here is her passage on this:

Taking his cue from Madison, Mr. Obama writes in his 2006 book “The Audacity of Hope” that the constitutional framework is “designed to force us into a conversation,” that it offers “a way by which we argue about our future.” This notion of a living document is directly at odds with the conception of Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court, who has spoken of “the good, old dead Constitution.”

But Cohen's---and Kloppenberg's---reference to James Madison shows how Obama's philosophy splits, in my opinion, the living/dead difference. Kloppenberg called the following "the only smoking gun" that arose from his research, but he spoke of a November 1991 document wherein Obama elaborated on a "curvature of Constitutional space" around the process of deliberation that informed the document's creation (i.e. the Constitutional Convention itself as a process of compromise).

So if Scalia and his crowd represent one historical tradition in thinking about the U.S. Constitution "works," then Obama---and Madison and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and the Warren Court---represent another. Both traditions are historical, but both are not seen as valid in the eyes of (legal) ideologues. I favor the living/deliberative/curvature interpretation, but my point is that appeals to history don't answer which is better, at least not in the limited context of a discussion about Obama's intellectual history. The argument is a moral-political one about which interpretative tradition is superior. Conservatives can't use history to prove wrong a liberal constitutional train of thought.

As a mild digression, I offer that proof in either direction would have to come through a utilitarian study of the effects of both philosophies on policies that touch people. But do we have the time to figure this out by scientific study? No. We're living the study. And U.S. citizens already complain that our congress doesn't act fast enough (which would itself be an argument in the direction of living/deliberative tradition---anyway).

That Kloppenberg's plenary and book served up such meaty history to chew on is a credit to him and the planning team for the conference---Paul Murphy, Lauren Kientz, and especially Andrew Hartman.

I end these reflections by offering a hearty thank you to James Kloppenberg. It was a great pleasure having him at the conference. - TL

The Kloppenberg Plenary: Obama's (Controversial?) Intellectual Biography

Our Third Annual USIH Conference almost received a direct reference in Patricia Cohen's review of James T. Kloppenberg's newest book, Reading Obama: Dreams, Hopes, and the American Political Tradition (Princeton Press, 2010). Here are her two near misses (bolds mine): (1) "In New York City last week to give a standing-room-only lecture about his forthcoming intellectual biography... ." and (2) "Those who heard Mr. Kloppenberg present his argument at a conference on intellectual history at the City University of New York’s Graduate Center responded with prolonged applause."

The USIH omission is a shame because I'm pretty sure I remember Kloppenberg saying in the plenary that his book was released that same day, October 22. The article says "on Sunday," but it is unclear whether Cohen meant this coming Sunday (Oct. 31) or the Sunday after the conference (Oct. 24). In any case, I guess we'll have to wait 'til next year on our conference's first direct NYT appearance. C'est la vie.

We can take some pride, however, in the fact that Cohen quoted from one of our own: Andrew Hartman. Here are her two references to him:

(1) "The way he traced Obama’s intellectual influences was fascinating for us, given that Obama’s academic background seems so similar to ours," said Andrew Hartman, a historian at Illinois State University who helped organize the conference.



(2) "There seemed to be skepticism regarding whether Obama’s intellectual background actually translated into policies that the mostly left-leaning audience could get behind," Mr. Hartman said. "Several audience members, myself included, probably view Obama the president as a centrist like Clinton rather than a progressive intellectual as painted by Kloppenberg."

Andrew deserves the credit for the "standing-room-only" crowd. The plenary was held in the Segal Theatre, and thirty-five seats were available both on the right and left sides of the room. Along with the nineteen standing in the back of the room (which included me), I counted roughly 90 people attending. I round up to 90 because I could not see everyone around the columns, and only noticed a random seat or two empty in the chairs.

The book review fairly summarizes Kloppenberg's talk. I was pleased to see two specific things cited. First, Kloppenberg emphasized at the start of his talk that Obama's intellectual development occurred in relation to three key themes, or "matrices" (a term left out by Cohen but used by him): (a) the history of American democracy, (b) the ongoing development of the philosophy of pragmatism, and finally (c) the history of the intellectual (and social and cultural) upheavals of the 1970s-1990s. Cohen presents all three of these themes in the tenth paragraph of her piece, or roughly half-way through.

Second, I was also happy to see this humorous line from the talk make into Cohen's write up (bolds mine):

Conservatives who argue that Mr. Obama is a socialist or an anti-colonialist (as Dinesh D’Souza does in his book “The Roots of Obama’s Rage”) are far off the mark, [Kloppenberg] said. “Adams and Jefferson were the only anti-colonialists whom Obama has been affected by,” he told the audience in New York. “He has a profound love of America.”

Although I liked seeing those two references, there were some further details Kloppenberg relayed in relation to his three key themes. When he discussed the upheavals of the Culture Wars, he stressed the theme--and the tension---between "universality and particularity." He asserted that Obama absorbed the lessons of Thomas Kuhn, Clifford Geertz, and John Rawls in relation to creating "provisional fixed points" and "useful fictions." In other words, Kloppenberg sees Obama as incorporating the inherent, contingent nature of pragmatism in his thinking about policy and the culture wars. Obama attempts to undercut the passion of ideological thinking by seeing phenomenological truths rooted in events and episodes.

There is no denying the relativism of this philosophical approach, but Kloppenberg did not specify in his talk whether that framework permeated ~all~ aspects of Obama's life (e.g. religion), or just his political philosophy. If the former, then conservatives of all stripes will jump on Kloppenberg's book as proof of Obama's radical leftism, or at least of his lack of deep roots in the long Western tradition (i.e. transcendent truths, achievement of pure objectivity, etc.). And Kloppenberg's explicit reference to Nietzsche as being a part of Obama's intellectual history will push another corner of cultural critics, particularly the Bloomian/Straussian crowd, into apoplexy. I must say that though Kloppenberg made that connection, he did not specify exactly where---in the talk at least---Nietzsche directly entered Obama's story.

One could counter the relativism charge in relation to Obama's political philosophy by citing the (liberal) historicism of Obama's constitutional thinking. Cohen sets this up as the now familiar "living" versus "dead" constitutional philosophies. Here is her passage on this:

Taking his cue from Madison, Mr. Obama writes in his 2006 book “The Audacity of Hope” that the constitutional framework is “designed to force us into a conversation,” that it offers “a way by which we argue about our future.” This notion of a living document is directly at odds with the conception of Justice Antonin Scalia of the Supreme Court, who has spoken of “the good, old dead Constitution.”

But Cohen's---and Kloppenberg's---reference to James Madison shows how Obama's philosophy splits, in my opinion, the living/dead difference. Kloppenberg called the following "the only smoking gun" that arose from his research, but he spoke of a November 1991 document wherein Obama elaborated on a "curvature of Constitutional space" around the process of deliberation that informed the document's creation (i.e. the Constitutional Convention itself as a process of compromise).

So if Scalia and his crowd represent one historical tradition in thinking about the U.S. Constitution "works," then Obama---and Madison and Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. and the Warren Court---represent another. Both traditions are historical, but both are not seen as valid in the eyes of (legal) ideologues. I favor the living/deliberative/curvature interpretation, but my point is that appeals to history don't answer which is better, at least not in the limited context of a discussion about Obama's intellectual history. The argument is a moral-political one about which interpretative tradition is superior. Conservatives can't use history to prove wrong a liberal constitutional train of thought.

As a mild digression, I offer that proof in either direction would have to come through a utilitarian study of the effects of both philosophies on policies that touch people. But do we have the time to figure this out by scientific study? No. We're living the study. And U.S. citizens already complain that our congress doesn't act fast enough (which would itself be an argument in the direction of living/deliberative tradition---anyway).

That Kloppenberg's plenary and book served up such meaty history to chew on is a credit to him and the planning team for the conference---Paul Murphy, Lauren Kientz, and especially Andrew Hartman.

I end these reflections by offering a hearty thank you to James Kloppenberg. It was a great pleasure having him at the conference. - TL

USIH Conference: Book Exhibit

We are very excited that the Third Annual U.S. Intellectual History Conference will include a book exhibit, organized by the LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

The exhibit will provide a comprehensive collection of the latest and most significant titles in the field and will contribute substantially to the excitement and intellectual value of our meeting. The book exhibit will be open throughout the conference, on the concourse level. Please stop by early and often, say hello to book exhibit manager Richard Klein—and browse to your heart’s content. All books are on sale at special, discounted rates.

The following are among the publishers whose titles will be featured in the display:

Bedford/St. Martins
Brill
U. of California Press
Cambridge U. Press
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
David Brown Book Co.
Fordham U. Press
Harvard U. Press
U. of Iowa Press
ISI Books
NYU Press
Oxford U. Press
Palgrave Macmillan
Paradigm Publishers
Paulist Press
U. of Pennsylvania Press
Polity
Princeton U. Press
Prometheus Books
Routledge USA
Routledge UK
Rutgers U. Press
Smithsonian Books
Soft Skull Press
Taylor & Francis USA
Temple U. P.
W.W. Norton & Co.
Wesleyan U. Press
U. of Wisconsin

For more information on LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE BOOK EXHIBITS, please call Richard Klein at (718) 393-1075 or email LSSBookExhibits@earthlink.net.

THE BOOK EXHIBIT IS LOCATED ON THE CONCOURSE LEVEL, NEXT TO THE SESSION ROOMS

USIH Conference: Book Exhibit

We are very excited that the Third Annual U.S. Intellectual History Conference will include a book exhibit, organized by the LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE

The exhibit will provide a comprehensive collection of the latest and most significant titles in the field and will contribute substantially to the excitement and intellectual value of our meeting. The book exhibit will be open throughout the conference, on the concourse level. Please stop by early and often, say hello to book exhibit manager Richard Klein—and browse to your heart’s content. All books are on sale at special, discounted rates.

The following are among the publishers whose titles will be featured in the display:

Bedford/St. Martins
Brill
U. of California Press
Cambridge U. Press
Cambridge Scholars Publishing
David Brown Book Co.
Fordham U. Press
Harvard U. Press
U. of Iowa Press
ISI Books
NYU Press
Oxford U. Press
Palgrave Macmillan
Paradigm Publishers
Paulist Press
U. of Pennsylvania Press
Polity
Princeton U. Press
Prometheus Books
Routledge USA
Routledge UK
Rutgers U. Press
Smithsonian Books
Soft Skull Press
Taylor & Francis USA
Temple U. P.
W.W. Norton & Co.
Wesleyan U. Press
U. of Wisconsin

For more information on LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE BOOK EXHIBITS, please call Richard Klein at (718) 393-1075 or email LSSBookExhibits@earthlink.net.

THE BOOK EXHIBIT IS LOCATED ON THE CONCOURSE LEVEL, NEXT TO THE SESSION ROOMS

USIH3 Registration

In order to register for the Third Annual U.S. Intellectual History Conference, please mail a check for $60.00 by October 15 to the following address:

Ana Bozicevic
Program Manager
The Center for the Humanities
365 Fifth Avenue, Room 5103
New York, NY 10016

Please make your checks out to The Graduate Center Foundation.

Along with the check, please include a separate sheet with your name, affiliation, and contact information. In addition to covering the costs of conference space, this fee will cover coffee and snack services during all day sessions, and wine and cheese services prior to both evening plenary sessions.

USIH3 Registration

In order to register for the Third Annual U.S. Intellectual History Conference, please mail a check for $60.00 by October 15 to the following address:

Ana Bozicevic
Program Manager
The Center for the Humanities
365 Fifth Avenue, Room 5103
New York, NY 10016

Please make your checks out to The Graduate Center Foundation.

Along with the check, please include a separate sheet with your name, affiliation, and contact information. In addition to covering the costs of conference space, this fee will cover coffee and snack services during all day sessions, and wine and cheese services prior to both evening plenary sessions.

Are You Searching For A USIH Conference Roommate?

If so, e-mail fellow USIH contributor Lauren Kientz at kientzla@msu.edu. She's helping put folks in touch. - TL

Are You Searching For A USIH Conference Roommate?

If so, e-mail fellow USIH contributor Lauren Kientz at kientzla@msu.edu. She's helping put folks in touch. - TL

Chomsky's [43-year-old] Challenge To Public Intellectuals

As with my last post, I offer another inspirational prompt on the topic of public intellectuals in relation to this fall's USIH conference.

Wisconsin Public Radio's regular program, To The Best of Our Knowledge, hosted Noam Chomsky on June 20, 2010 to discuss his 1967 essay, "The Responsibility of Intellectuals."

Published on February 23 of that year, as a special supplement to the New York Review of Books, Chomsky used the context of the escalating Vietnam War as an opportunity to lambaste the "the cult of the experts" and challenge intellectuals "to speak the truth and to expose lies." In addition, he added, "If it is the responsibility of the intellectual to insist upon the truth, it is also his duty to see events in their historical perspective."

For perceived breaches in the public's trust, Chomsky directed his wrath first at the actions of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Walt Rostow, and the "New Frontiersmen" in general. But he also touched on misguided or irresponsible statements made in the public sphere by Irving Kristol, McGeorge Bundy, David N. Rowe, Daniel Bell, and others.

Here's a link to the NPR program. The Chomsky interview occurs during segment one---the 0:00-17:00 minute portion of the show.

Is Chomsky's essay still relevant? Or does the context of Vietnam War negate its effectiveness---rendering it meaningless to today's reader? Does the public today think of intellectuals in terms of truth and lies? Or are public intellectuals just another form of 'infotainment' to today's reading public? Do we only expect irony and/or skepticism from our public intellectuals? - TL

Chomsky's [43-year-old] Challenge To Public Intellectuals

As with my last post, I offer another inspirational prompt on the topic of public intellectuals in relation to this fall's USIH conference.

Wisconsin Public Radio's regular program, To The Best of Our Knowledge, hosted Noam Chomsky on June 20, 2010 to discuss his 1967 essay, "The Responsibility of Intellectuals."

Published on February 23 of that year, as a special supplement to the New York Review of Books, Chomsky used the context of the escalating Vietnam War as an opportunity to lambaste the "the cult of the experts" and challenge intellectuals "to speak the truth and to expose lies." In addition, he added, "If it is the responsibility of the intellectual to insist upon the truth, it is also his duty to see events in their historical perspective."

For perceived breaches in the public's trust, Chomsky directed his wrath first at the actions of Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., Walt Rostow, and the "New Frontiersmen" in general. But he also touched on misguided or irresponsible statements made in the public sphere by Irving Kristol, McGeorge Bundy, David N. Rowe, Daniel Bell, and others.

Here's a link to the NPR program. The Chomsky interview occurs during segment one---the 0:00-17:00 minute portion of the show.

Is Chomsky's essay still relevant? Or does the context of Vietnam War negate its effectiveness---rendering it meaningless to today's reader? Does the public today think of intellectuals in terms of truth and lies? Or are public intellectuals just another form of 'infotainment' to today's reading public? Do we only expect irony and/or skepticism from our public intellectuals? - TL

"There was no United States": Bender On Historians And Their Publics

In honor of our USIH 3.0 conference program release, I offer this related essay by Thomas Bender on the role of historians as public intellectuals. Titled "Historians in Public," Bender uses the article to think about the audiences of historians in relation to both historians' particular kinds of expertise and their means of communication. I found this reminder from Bender, appearing early in the essay, to be most worthy (underlining mine):

As Émile Zola declaimed, the intellectual is by definition a public actor; moreover, all professions, including the academic ones, claim a public aspect by definition to justify their privileges of incorporation and self-regulation.

If we follow Zola's prompt, the distinction between an 'intellectual' and a 'scholar' is the starting point for thinking about audiences for intellectuals (their 'publics') in the twentieth century. Words to ponder as we begin thinking through our manuscripts for the fall program.

And here's another passage---with no small implications for USIH as a subfield and its conference (this fall and beyond, underlining mine):

At the time the AHA was founded the overriding cultural and political project was restoring the union. The price of reconciliation was accepting a regime of white terror imposed on black Americans in the former Confederate states. One of the great accomplishments of recent scholarship has been to make this clear.[13] In fact the scholarship of the past two or three decades has focused on a variety of exclusions—many people who were previously excluded from the American narrative—and by implication—the American public. Now race, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation have been written into history and public life. This was obviously a good thing, and it had a large impact in schools, the media, and the law, among other dimensions of our lives.

Yet something was lost—the nation and the state. The recovered persons were incorporated into society, not into a narrative of the nation or the state, into identity politics, not citizenship. In the 1980s and 1990s instead of talk about and inquiry into “the public,” there was talk of publics, alternative publics, counter-publics, a black public sphere, and more. The list got pretty long, but the public dissolved in this otherwise invaluable historiography of the 1980s and 1990s. There was no United States. History was all parts, no whole.

Wow. But Bender's essay contains much more. Indeed, we could mine this piece for days. I won't reproduce the rest here, but would be happy to converse about his other points---large and small---in the comments below. - TL

"There was no United States": Bender On Historians And Their Publics

In honor of our USIH 3.0 conference program release, I offer this related essay by Thomas Bender on the role of historians as public intellectuals. Titled "Historians in Public," Bender uses the article to think about the audiences of historians in relation to both historians' particular kinds of expertise and their means of communication. I found this reminder from Bender, appearing early in the essay, to be most worthy (underlining mine):

As Émile Zola declaimed, the intellectual is by definition a public actor; moreover, all professions, including the academic ones, claim a public aspect by definition to justify their privileges of incorporation and self-regulation.

If we follow Zola's prompt, the distinction between an 'intellectual' and a 'scholar' is the starting point for thinking about audiences for intellectuals (their 'publics') in the twentieth century. Words to ponder as we begin thinking through our manuscripts for the fall program.

And here's another passage---with no small implications for USIH as a subfield and its conference (this fall and beyond, underlining mine):

At the time the AHA was founded the overriding cultural and political project was restoring the union. The price of reconciliation was accepting a regime of white terror imposed on black Americans in the former Confederate states. One of the great accomplishments of recent scholarship has been to make this clear.[13] In fact the scholarship of the past two or three decades has focused on a variety of exclusions—many people who were previously excluded from the American narrative—and by implication—the American public. Now race, gender, ethnicity, and sexual orientation have been written into history and public life. This was obviously a good thing, and it had a large impact in schools, the media, and the law, among other dimensions of our lives.

Yet something was lost—the nation and the state. The recovered persons were incorporated into society, not into a narrative of the nation or the state, into identity politics, not citizenship. In the 1980s and 1990s instead of talk about and inquiry into “the public,” there was talk of publics, alternative publics, counter-publics, a black public sphere, and more. The list got pretty long, but the public dissolved in this otherwise invaluable historiography of the 1980s and 1990s. There was no United States. History was all parts, no whole.

Wow. But Bender's essay contains much more. Indeed, we could mine this piece for days. I won't reproduce the rest here, but would be happy to converse about his other points---large and small---in the comments below. - TL

Program: Third Annual US Intellectual History Conference

Intellectuals and Their Publics
Center for the Humanities
The Graduate Center
CUNY
October 21-22, 2010

For information on registration, click here.

PROGRAM

Thursday, October 21, 2010

10:00 am-12:00: Session A

Segal Theatre, Panel 1

Chicago Social Science and American Conservative Thought

Angus Burgin, Johns Hopkins University
Chicago Economists and Free-Market Advocacy during the Great Depression

Robert Thomas, Columbia University
Frank Knight’s Weberian Interventions in the 1930s Crisis of Liberalism

Stephen Turner, University of South Florida
Postwar Chicago and the Americanization of European Liberalism

Commentator: Benjamin Alpers, University of Oklahoma

C201, Panel 2

Intellectuals and the Left

Jeffrey B. Perry, Independent Scholar
Hubert Harrison: Harlem's Brilliant, Mass-based, Public Intellectual

Nathan Godfried, University of Maine
Public Intellectuals and the Popular Front: Political Economist J. Raymond Walsh, 1932-1938

Commentator: Mike O’Connor, Georgia State University

C202, Panel 3

A Decent Disrespect: The Opinions of Mankind and the Making of a Modern Republic

Varad Mehta, Independent Scholar
Extinguishing the “Lamp of Experience”: History and Modernity in the American Revolution

Matthew Peterson, Claremont Graduate University
The Purpose of Government in the Rhetoric of Ratification: Promoting the Public Good and Protecting Individual Rights

Kathleen Bartoloni-Tuazon, The George Washington University
The Third Body of Washington: The Presidential Title Controversy & the Collision of Sovereignties

Commentator: Martin Burke, CUNY, The Graduate Center

C203, Panel 4

Church, State, and Law in U.S. Intellectual History

David Sehat, Georgia State University
The Myth of American Religious Freedom

Remalian Cocar, Emory University
Between Liberalism and Evangelicalism: Early 20th-Century Mainline Protestants and Their Public

Christopher Hickman, The George Washington University
“An Unfortunate Metaphor”: Theological Liberals and the Establishment Clause Jurisprudence of the Vinson Court

Ethan Schrum, University of Pennsylvania
Samuel Stumpf and the Conversation between Law and Theology in the Postwar United States

Commentator: Eugene McCarraher, Villanova University

C204, Panel 5

Gendered Public Spheres

Kathryn Troy, Stony Brook University
Contested Modernity: Conflicting Images of Nineteenth Century Women in America

Andrea L. Turpin, University of Notre Dame
Andrew Dickson White vs. Charles William Eliot: Science, Religion, and Class in Debates over Collegiate Coeducation

Susan Lanzoni, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jessie Taft and the Shaping of the Social Self

Linda Przybyszewski, University of Notre Dame
Dressing in Good Taste: Home Economists, Aesthetic Principles, and the Female Student

Commentator: Hilary Hallett, Columbia University

C205, Panel 6

Cross-Atlantic Exchanges: Theory and Pedagogy

Robert Zwarg, University of Leipzig
The Transformation of a Tradition: The American Reception of Critical Theory

Gregory Jones-Katz, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Rethinking Deconstruction in America

Dennis R. Bryson, Bilkent University
Teaching U.S. Intellectual History in Turkey

Commentator: Daniel Wickberg, University of Texas-Dallas

1:00-3:00 pm: Session B

Segal Theatre, Panel 7

The Culture Wars as Intellectual History

Whitney Strub, Rutgers University-Newark
The Porno Follies: Intellectuals, Pornography, and the Emergence of the Culture-War Narrative

Allison Perlman, New Jersey Institute of Technology/Rutgers University-Newark
The ‘Burden of Diversity’: Affirmative Action, Media Deregulation, and the Culture Wars

Andrew Hartman, Illinois State University
Moderns Versus Postmoderns: The Culture Wars and the Future of the Left

Commentator: James Livingston, Rutgers University

C201, Panel 8

Ethnicities, Old and New

Michael Mezzano Jr., Wheaton College
The Futility of Criticism: Race, Biology and Immigration Restriction

Richard Moss, Independent Scholar
Ethnic Intellectuals and the Problem of Audience in the 1970s

Alexander Elkins, Temple University
Producing the Ethnic Public: Michael Novak, White Ethnics, and Postwar Political Culture

Commentator: Greg Sumner, University of Detroit Mercy

C202, Panel 9

Neoconservatism and U.S. Foreign Policy: Enduring Arguments, Enduring Provocations

Laurence R. Jurdem, Fordham University
James Burnham, Sidney Hook and the Search for Intellectual Truth from Communism to the Cold War, 1933-1956

Joshua Botts, Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State
From Nightmares to Dreams: The Evolution of Neoconservative Strategic Culture from 1970 to 2000

John Ehrman, Independent Scholar
Neoconservatism After Iraq: Consistency and Adaptability

Commentator: Jennifer Burns, University of Virginia

C203, Panel 10

Defining Liberal Education and Freedom for American Democracy, 1940-1970

Fred Beuttler, U.S. House of Representatives Historian
“Politics as the only School of Liberal Arts”: The Debate over Goals for Education at the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion, 1945-1950

Tim Lacy, Monmouth College
The Meaning of Freedom: Dialectics, Intellectuals, and Democratic Culture during the Cold War

Benjamin Alpers, University of Oklahoma
Before the Closing: Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom, and U.S. Higher Education in the 1960s

Commentator: Rene Arcilla, New York University

C204, Panel 11

Intellectuals and Cold War Policy

Daniel Bessner, Duke University
Bildung, Wissenschaft, and the German Origins of the Defense Intellectual

Barbara J. Falk, Canadian Forces College
Moscow’s Puppets? American Communist Intellectuals and the Construction of Early Cold War Political Discourse

Commentator: Bruce Kuklick, University of Pennsylvania

C205, Panel 12

Identity Formation in American History

William Fine, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown
Historicizing Identity

Citlali Sosa-Riddell, University of California, Los Angeles
Early Chicano Intellectual Thought: Californios and their Public Efforts to Create a “Native” Identity

Lindsey Wallace, University of Colorado, Boulder
Basil Manly and His Public: Southern Moral Philosophy and “Lived” Religious Experience in the Antebellum Baptist South

Daniel Vandersommers, The Ohio State University
Violence, Animals, and Egalitarianism: Audubon and the Intellectual Formation of Animal Rights in America

Commentator: Gregory Downs, The City College of New York

3:15-5:15 pm: Session C

Segal Theatre, Panel 13

To Serve Mankind: Wars, Faith, and United States Foreign Policy

Angela Lahr, Westminster College
Church, State, and War: Evangelicals, Politics, and the Vietnam War

Christopher McKnight Nichols, University of Pennsylvania
Opposition to Empire and Isolationist Ideas in the United States, 1895-1910

Matthew Avery Sutton, Washington State University
Bracing for Armageddon: The Global Visions of World War II-Era Evangelicalism

Commentator: Leo P. Ribuffo, The George Washington University

C201, Panel 14

Publics and Their Scientific Intellectuals: The Multitude of Scientific Experts and Their Many Audiences in the 20th-century United States

Sylwester Ratowt, American Philosophical Society
Their Colleagues Rejected Them, but Publics Accepted Them: Public Intellectuals and the Limits of Scientific Professionalization, 1890-1920

Paul Burnett, St. Thomas University
You Can Run Numbers But You Can’t Hide: Agricultural Economists Define the Nature of Their Calling, 1942-52

Audra Wolfe, Independent Scholar
Between Popularization and Policy: Biological Scientists as Public Intellectuals, 1945-1972

Erik Peterson, University of Notre Dame
What Does Gregory Bateson’s Status as a Philosopher for the New Age Have to Do With the Delay on the Synthesis Between Evolutionary and Developmental Biology?

Commentator: Hunter Heyck, University of Oklahoma

C202, Panel 15

Technology, Philosophy, and Film: The Idea of American Cinema from D.W. Griffith to Terrence Malick

Daniel Wuebben, The City College of New York, The Graduate Center
Wire-Cutting and Cross-Cutting: The Telegraph and Tension in the Early Western

Andreas Killen, The City College of New York
Cinema, Conditioning, and the Cold-War Subject

Martin Woessner, The City College of New York, Center for Worker Education
The Fourfold on Film: Terrence Malick between Stanley Cavell and Martin Heidegger

Commentator: Marlene Clark, The City College of New York, Center for Worker Education

C203, Panel 16

Varieties of Conservatism, Mid-Twentieth Century

Paul Murphy, Grand Valley State University
The New Humanist Controversy and the Conservative-Modernist Split in American Intellectual Life

Seth Bartee, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
The Reactionary Historians: The Rejection of Disciplinary Professionalism and the Problems of Historical Scholarship in Democracy

Emily Dufton, The George Washington University
“Hurrah for Western Civilization!”: Representations of Africa in the Conservative Cultural Imagination

Commentator: Kim Phillips-Fein, New York University-Gallatin

C204, Panel 17

Mid-Twentieth-Century Social Thought

Donna J. Drucker, Indiana State University
“A Most Interesting Chapter in the History of Science”: Intellectual Responses to Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male

Joseph Malherek, The George Washington University
Market Segmentation as Discursive Deflection: Social Critics and Their Adversaries in Advertising

Edward J.K. Gitre, University of Virginia
Observing the “Ries-man”: The Social Scientific Imagination in Mid-twentieth-century America

Commentator: David Steigerwald, The Ohio State University

C205, Panel 18

Fame, Myth-making, Authority, and Public Intellectuals

Ben Wurgaft, The New School
Leo Strauss and the Public Intellectuals

David K. Hecht, Bowdoin College
Rewriting Oppenheimer: Moral Authority and the Public Scientist

Erik M. Greenberg, Autry National Center/UCLA
The American Career of Israel Zangwill: An Inquiry Into the Nature of Fame and the Public Intellectual

Commentator: Robert Westbrook, University of Rochester

6:00-8:00 pm

Segal Theatre

Plenary: Renewing Black Intellectual History

Participants:
Adolph Reed, Jr., University of Pennsylvania
Kenneth W. Warren, University of Chicago
Dean E. Robinson, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Touré F. Reed, Illinois State University

Friday, October 22, 2010

10:00 am-12:00: Session D

Segal Theatre, Panel 19

Do-It-Yourself Criticism: Inquiries into Values, 1945-1975

Daniel H. Borus, University of Rochester
The Conspicuous Consumption of Thorstein Veblen, 1945-1960

Lisa Szefel, Pacific University
Peter Viereck’s Mid-Century “New Conservatism”: “Uncautiously Daring, Free-Thinking Lovers of Beauty”

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Philosophy out of Doors: Thinking as a Handicraft and Spiritual Practice in Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

Commentator: J. David Hoeveler, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

C201, Panel 20

The Intellectuals' Cold War: An Historiographical Challenge

Matthew J. Cotter, CUNY, The Graduate Center
The Philosopher as Heretic: Sidney Hook and Higher Education’s Cold War

Michael Brenes, CUNY, The Graduate Center
From Isolation to Wilsonianism: William F. Buckley and Conservative Internationalism during the Early Cold War

Peter Aigner, CUNY, The Graduate Center
Hannah Arendt’s Revolution

Commentator: Jennifer Delton, Skidmore College

C202, Panel 21

Religion and Early African-American Political Thought

Christopher Cameron, University of North Carolina Charlotte
Puritanism and the Ideological Origins of Black Politics in America

Peter Wirzbicki, New York University
The Adelphic Union, Transcendentalism, and the Creation of a Black Intellectual Life in Antebellum Boston

Molly Oshatz, San Francisco State University
The Antislavery Origins of Historicism in America

Commentator: James Levy, Hofstra University

C203, Panel 22

Americans and the World, 1898-1922

Trygve V. R. Throntveit, Harvard University
A League for the Layperson: Public Intellectuals, Presidential Leadership, and Popular Internationalism in the Era of the Treaty Fight, 1918-1922

Matthew J. Shaughnessy, Marist College
Memory, War and the Judeo-Christian Mission in Lowell Thomas’ Travelogues, 1917-1919

Commentator: Craig A. Daigle, The City College of New York

C204, Panel 23

Aesthetics and Ideas

Gary Grieve-Carlson, Lebanon Valley College
In the Borderlands: American Poetry Engages History

Christina G. Larocco, University of Maryland, College Park
The Art of Politics / The Politics of Art: Tennessee Williams and His Audience

Camelia Lenart, SUNY Albany
Martha Graham and Bethsabee de Rothschild: an Artistic Friendship in the Service of Modern Dance

Valerie Hellstein, Boston College
Paintings All Around You: Paul Goodman, Vanguard Art, and the Abstract Expressionists

Commentator: Joan Shelley Rubin, University of Rochester

C205, Panel 24

Civil Religion and U.S. Intellectual History, Roundtable

Participants:
Wendy Wall, Binghamton University
Philip S. Gorski, Yale University
Raymond Haberski, Marian University

Commentator: Wilfred McClay, University of Tennessee

12:15-1:15

C201: Special Session: Brown Bag Lunch

Brian Lloyd, University of California, Riverside
When the Audience was in the Streets: Pop Musicians and Political Insurgency in the late-1960s (includes audio presentation)

1:30-3:00 pm

Segal Theatre

Keynote Address

James Kloppenberg, Harvard University
Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition

3:15-5:15: Session E

Segal Theatre, Panel 25

Conservative Influences from the Other Europe: American Conservatism and Eastern Europe

Nancy Sinkoff, Rutgers University
Vilna on My Mind: The Polishness of Lucy S. Dawidowicz’s Turn to Neoconservatism

Jennifer Burns, University of Virginia
A Cold Warrior Before the Cold War: Ayn Rand as Russian Intellectual in America

Michael Kimmage, Catholic University
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and the Emptiness of American Conservatism

Comments: Audience

C201, Panel 26

Social Thought in the Progressive Era

Louise W. Knight, Northwestern University
The Ethical Limits of Rhetoric: Jane Addams and the Arguments for Women’s Suffrage

Richard L. Hughes, Illinois State University
From Jewish Ghetto to “Negro Invasion”: The Contested History of the Black Ghetto during the Progressive Era

Shaun S. Nichols, Harvard University
Creating a New Republic: Progressivism, Pluralism, and the Search for the Public Good, 1908-1930

Neil Jumonville, Florida State University
The Curious Case of Privacy

Commentator: Jackson Lears, Rutgers University

C202, Panel 27

Rock Critics as Public Intellectuals: Mass-Cultural Music Writing From the 60s to the Present

Chair: Nick Bromell, University of Massachusetts

Devon Powers, Drexel University
The Problem of Pop: Rock Criticism, Pop Intellectualism, and Postmodernity

Michael J. Kramer, Northwestern University
Creem Magazine and Rock Criticism's Public Intellectuals After the Sixties Counterculture

Daphne Carr, Columbia University
Lad Mags in the Post-PC Era: Rock Criticism, Gender, and Sexuality, 1990-2010

Commentator: Paul Anderson, University of Michigan

C203, Panel 28

Intellectuals and Rural Life from World War I to the Cold War

Todd Dresser, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Encounters with Carol Kennecott: Rural Sociology and Rural Community Development, 1919-1929

Gabriel Rosenberg, Brown University
'Low Modern’-izing the Family Farm: The Pronatalist Turn in the late-New Deal USDA

Daniel Immerwahr, University of California, Berkeley
Agrarian Intellectuals at Home and Abroad: Decentralism in U.S. Thought and Policy, 1935–1955

Commentator: Andrew Jewett, Harvard University

C204, Panel 29

Racial Politics, Intellectuals, and Academia

Lauren Kientz Anderson, University of Kentucky
Abram Harris’s Identity as an Intellectual and an Academic

Jason Schulman, Emory University
Contingencies of History: Herbert Gutman and the Politics of Family Discourse

Stephen Kercher, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh
Academic Intellectuals, Race, and the Impact of Black Student Demonstrations in Wisconsin During the Late 1960s

Carl Pedersen, Copenhagen Business School
The Obama Dilemma: Confronting Race in the 21st Century

Commentator: Jonathan Scott Holloway, Yale University

C205, Panel 30

American Jewish Intellectuals: The “Old Left” and Beyond

Julian Nemeth, Brandeis University
Sidney Hook, Herbert Aptheker, and the Politics of Academic Freedom

David Weinfeld, New York University
Horace Kallen Reconsidered: Cultural Pluralism and Hybridity as Lived Experience

Ronnie Grinberg, University of Colorado, Boulder
An Often Overlooked Conservative: Midge Decter—A 'Scourge of Feminist Dogma’

Commentator: Tony Michels, University of Wisconsin-Madison

7:00-9:00 pm

Elebash Recital Hall

Plenary: Intellectual History for What?

Participants:
George Cotkin, Cal Poly
Rochelle Gurstein, Independent Scholar
Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Syracuse University
Wilfred McClay, University of Tennessee
David Steigerwald, The Ohio State University
Casey Nelson Blake, Columbia University

Program: Third Annual US Intellectual History Conference

Intellectuals and Their Publics
Center for the Humanities
The Graduate Center
CUNY
October 21-22, 2010

For information on registration, click here.

PROGRAM

Thursday, October 21, 2010

10:00 am-12:00: Session A

Segal Theatre, Panel 1

Chicago Social Science and American Conservative Thought

Angus Burgin, Johns Hopkins University
Chicago Economists and Free-Market Advocacy during the Great Depression

Robert Thomas, Columbia University
Frank Knight’s Weberian Interventions in the 1930s Crisis of Liberalism

Stephen Turner, University of South Florida
Postwar Chicago and the Americanization of European Liberalism

Commentator: Benjamin Alpers, University of Oklahoma

C201, Panel 2

Intellectuals and the Left

Jeffrey B. Perry, Independent Scholar
Hubert Harrison: Harlem's Brilliant, Mass-based, Public Intellectual

Nathan Godfried, University of Maine
Public Intellectuals and the Popular Front: Political Economist J. Raymond Walsh, 1932-1938

Commentator: Mike O’Connor, Georgia State University

C202, Panel 3

A Decent Disrespect: The Opinions of Mankind and the Making of a Modern Republic

Varad Mehta, Independent Scholar
Extinguishing the “Lamp of Experience”: History and Modernity in the American Revolution

Matthew Peterson, Claremont Graduate University
The Purpose of Government in the Rhetoric of Ratification: Promoting the Public Good and Protecting Individual Rights

Kathleen Bartoloni-Tuazon, The George Washington University
The Third Body of Washington: The Presidential Title Controversy & the Collision of Sovereignties

Commentator: Martin Burke, CUNY, The Graduate Center

C203, Panel 4

Church, State, and Law in U.S. Intellectual History

David Sehat, Georgia State University
The Myth of American Religious Freedom

Remalian Cocar, Emory University
Between Liberalism and Evangelicalism: Early 20th-Century Mainline Protestants and Their Public

Christopher Hickman, The George Washington University
“An Unfortunate Metaphor”: Theological Liberals and the Establishment Clause Jurisprudence of the Vinson Court

Ethan Schrum, University of Pennsylvania
Samuel Stumpf and the Conversation between Law and Theology in the Postwar United States

Commentator: Eugene McCarraher, Villanova University

C204, Panel 5

Gendered Public Spheres

Kathryn Troy, Stony Brook University
Contested Modernity: Conflicting Images of Nineteenth Century Women in America

Andrea L. Turpin, University of Notre Dame
Andrew Dickson White vs. Charles William Eliot: Science, Religion, and Class in Debates over Collegiate Coeducation

Susan Lanzoni, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Jessie Taft and the Shaping of the Social Self

Linda Przybyszewski, University of Notre Dame
Dressing in Good Taste: Home Economists, Aesthetic Principles, and the Female Student

Commentator: Hilary Hallett, Columbia University

C205, Panel 6

Cross-Atlantic Exchanges: Theory and Pedagogy

Robert Zwarg, University of Leipzig
The Transformation of a Tradition: The American Reception of Critical Theory

Gregory Jones-Katz, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Rethinking Deconstruction in America

Dennis R. Bryson, Bilkent University
Teaching U.S. Intellectual History in Turkey

Commentator: Daniel Wickberg, University of Texas-Dallas

1:00-3:00 pm: Session B

Segal Theatre, Panel 7

The Culture Wars as Intellectual History

Whitney Strub, Rutgers University-Newark
The Porno Follies: Intellectuals, Pornography, and the Emergence of the Culture-War Narrative

Allison Perlman, New Jersey Institute of Technology/Rutgers University-Newark
The ‘Burden of Diversity’: Affirmative Action, Media Deregulation, and the Culture Wars

Andrew Hartman, Illinois State University
Moderns Versus Postmoderns: The Culture Wars and the Future of the Left

Commentator: James Livingston, Rutgers University

C201, Panel 8

Ethnicities, Old and New

Michael Mezzano Jr., Wheaton College
The Futility of Criticism: Race, Biology and Immigration Restriction

Richard Moss, Independent Scholar
Ethnic Intellectuals and the Problem of Audience in the 1970s

Alexander Elkins, Temple University
Producing the Ethnic Public: Michael Novak, White Ethnics, and Postwar Political Culture

Commentator: Greg Sumner, University of Detroit Mercy

C202, Panel 9

Neoconservatism and U.S. Foreign Policy: Enduring Arguments, Enduring Provocations

Laurence R. Jurdem, Fordham University
James Burnham, Sidney Hook and the Search for Intellectual Truth from Communism to the Cold War, 1933-1956

Joshua Botts, Office of the Historian, U.S. Department of State
From Nightmares to Dreams: The Evolution of Neoconservative Strategic Culture from 1970 to 2000

John Ehrman, Independent Scholar
Neoconservatism After Iraq: Consistency and Adaptability

Commentator: Jennifer Burns, University of Virginia

C203, Panel 10

Defining Liberal Education and Freedom for American Democracy, 1940-1970

Fred Beuttler, U.S. House of Representatives Historian
“Politics as the only School of Liberal Arts”: The Debate over Goals for Education at the Conference on Science, Philosophy and Religion, 1945-1950

Tim Lacy, Monmouth College
The Meaning of Freedom: Dialectics, Intellectuals, and Democratic Culture during the Cold War

Benjamin Alpers, University of Oklahoma
Before the Closing: Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom, and U.S. Higher Education in the 1960s

Commentator: Rene Arcilla, New York University

C204, Panel 11

Intellectuals and Cold War Policy

Daniel Bessner, Duke University
Bildung, Wissenschaft, and the German Origins of the Defense Intellectual

Barbara J. Falk, Canadian Forces College
Moscow’s Puppets? American Communist Intellectuals and the Construction of Early Cold War Political Discourse

Commentator: Bruce Kuklick, University of Pennsylvania

C205, Panel 12

Identity Formation in American History

William Fine, University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown
Historicizing Identity

Citlali Sosa-Riddell, University of California, Los Angeles
Early Chicano Intellectual Thought: Californios and their Public Efforts to Create a “Native” Identity

Lindsey Wallace, University of Colorado, Boulder
Basil Manly and His Public: Southern Moral Philosophy and “Lived” Religious Experience in the Antebellum Baptist South

Daniel Vandersommers, The Ohio State University
Violence, Animals, and Egalitarianism: Audubon and the Intellectual Formation of Animal Rights in America

Commentator: Gregory Downs, The City College of New York

3:15-5:15 pm: Session C

Segal Theatre, Panel 13

To Serve Mankind: Wars, Faith, and United States Foreign Policy

Angela Lahr, Westminster College
Church, State, and War: Evangelicals, Politics, and the Vietnam War

Christopher McKnight Nichols, University of Pennsylvania
Opposition to Empire and Isolationist Ideas in the United States, 1895-1910

Matthew Avery Sutton, Washington State University
Bracing for Armageddon: The Global Visions of World War II-Era Evangelicalism

Commentator: Leo P. Ribuffo, The George Washington University

C201, Panel 14

Publics and Their Scientific Intellectuals: The Multitude of Scientific Experts and Their Many Audiences in the 20th-century United States

Sylwester Ratowt, American Philosophical Society
Their Colleagues Rejected Them, but Publics Accepted Them: Public Intellectuals and the Limits of Scientific Professionalization, 1890-1920

Paul Burnett, St. Thomas University
You Can Run Numbers But You Can’t Hide: Agricultural Economists Define the Nature of Their Calling, 1942-52

Audra Wolfe, Independent Scholar
Between Popularization and Policy: Biological Scientists as Public Intellectuals, 1945-1972

Erik Peterson, University of Notre Dame
What Does Gregory Bateson’s Status as a Philosopher for the New Age Have to Do With the Delay on the Synthesis Between Evolutionary and Developmental Biology?

Commentator: Hunter Heyck, University of Oklahoma

C202, Panel 15

Technology, Philosophy, and Film: The Idea of American Cinema from D.W. Griffith to Terrence Malick

Daniel Wuebben, The City College of New York, The Graduate Center
Wire-Cutting and Cross-Cutting: The Telegraph and Tension in the Early Western

Andreas Killen, The City College of New York
Cinema, Conditioning, and the Cold-War Subject

Martin Woessner, The City College of New York, Center for Worker Education
The Fourfold on Film: Terrence Malick between Stanley Cavell and Martin Heidegger

Commentator: Marlene Clark, The City College of New York, Center for Worker Education

C203, Panel 16

Varieties of Conservatism, Mid-Twentieth Century

Paul Murphy, Grand Valley State University
The New Humanist Controversy and the Conservative-Modernist Split in American Intellectual Life

Seth Bartee, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
The Reactionary Historians: The Rejection of Disciplinary Professionalism and the Problems of Historical Scholarship in Democracy

Emily Dufton, The George Washington University
“Hurrah for Western Civilization!”: Representations of Africa in the Conservative Cultural Imagination

Commentator: Kim Phillips-Fein, New York University-Gallatin

C204, Panel 17

Mid-Twentieth-Century Social Thought

Donna J. Drucker, Indiana State University
“A Most Interesting Chapter in the History of Science”: Intellectual Responses to Alfred Kinsey’s Sexual Behavior in the Human Male

Joseph Malherek, The George Washington University
Market Segmentation as Discursive Deflection: Social Critics and Their Adversaries in Advertising

Edward J.K. Gitre, University of Virginia
Observing the “Ries-man”: The Social Scientific Imagination in Mid-twentieth-century America

Commentator: David Steigerwald, The Ohio State University

C205, Panel 18

Fame, Myth-making, Authority, and Public Intellectuals

Ben Wurgaft, The New School
Leo Strauss and the Public Intellectuals

David K. Hecht, Bowdoin College
Rewriting Oppenheimer: Moral Authority and the Public Scientist

Erik M. Greenberg, Autry National Center/UCLA
The American Career of Israel Zangwill: An Inquiry Into the Nature of Fame and the Public Intellectual

Commentator: Robert Westbrook, University of Rochester

6:00-8:00 pm

Segal Theatre

Plenary: Renewing Black Intellectual History

Participants:
Adolph Reed, Jr., University of Pennsylvania
Kenneth W. Warren, University of Chicago
Dean E. Robinson, University of Massachusetts-Amherst
Touré F. Reed, Illinois State University

Friday, October 22, 2010

10:00 am-12:00: Session D

Segal Theatre, Panel 19

Do-It-Yourself Criticism: Inquiries into Values, 1945-1975

Daniel H. Borus, University of Rochester
The Conspicuous Consumption of Thorstein Veblen, 1945-1960

Lisa Szefel, Pacific University
Peter Viereck’s Mid-Century “New Conservatism”: “Uncautiously Daring, Free-Thinking Lovers of Beauty”

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Philosophy out of Doors: Thinking as a Handicraft and Spiritual Practice in Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (1974)

Commentator: J. David Hoeveler, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

C201, Panel 20

The Intellectuals' Cold War: An Historiographical Challenge

Matthew J. Cotter, CUNY, The Graduate Center
The Philosopher as Heretic: Sidney Hook and Higher Education’s Cold War

Michael Brenes, CUNY, The Graduate Center
From Isolation to Wilsonianism: William F. Buckley and Conservative Internationalism during the Early Cold War

Peter Aigner, CUNY, The Graduate Center
Hannah Arendt’s Revolution

Commentator: Jennifer Delton, Skidmore College

C202, Panel 21

Religion and Early African-American Political Thought

Christopher Cameron, University of North Carolina Charlotte
Puritanism and the Ideological Origins of Black Politics in America

Peter Wirzbicki, New York University
The Adelphic Union, Transcendentalism, and the Creation of a Black Intellectual Life in Antebellum Boston

Molly Oshatz, San Francisco State University
The Antislavery Origins of Historicism in America

Commentator: James Levy, Hofstra University

C203, Panel 22

Americans and the World, 1898-1922

Trygve V. R. Throntveit, Harvard University
A League for the Layperson: Public Intellectuals, Presidential Leadership, and Popular Internationalism in the Era of the Treaty Fight, 1918-1922

Matthew J. Shaughnessy, Marist College
Memory, War and the Judeo-Christian Mission in Lowell Thomas’ Travelogues, 1917-1919

Commentator: Craig A. Daigle, The City College of New York

C204, Panel 23

Aesthetics and Ideas

Gary Grieve-Carlson, Lebanon Valley College
In the Borderlands: American Poetry Engages History

Christina G. Larocco, University of Maryland, College Park
The Art of Politics / The Politics of Art: Tennessee Williams and His Audience

Camelia Lenart, SUNY Albany
Martha Graham and Bethsabee de Rothschild: an Artistic Friendship in the Service of Modern Dance

Valerie Hellstein, Boston College
Paintings All Around You: Paul Goodman, Vanguard Art, and the Abstract Expressionists

Commentator: Joan Shelley Rubin, University of Rochester

C205, Panel 24

Civil Religion and U.S. Intellectual History, Roundtable

Participants:
Wendy Wall, Binghamton University
Philip S. Gorski, Yale University
Raymond Haberski, Marian University

Commentator: Wilfred McClay, University of Tennessee

12:15-1:15

C201: Special Session: Brown Bag Lunch

Brian Lloyd, University of California, Riverside
When the Audience was in the Streets: Pop Musicians and Political Insurgency in the late-1960s (includes audio presentation)

1:30-3:00 pm

Segal Theatre

Keynote Address

James Kloppenberg, Harvard University
Reading Obama: Dreams, Hope, and the American Political Tradition

3:15-5:15: Session E

Segal Theatre, Panel 25

Conservative Influences from the Other Europe: American Conservatism and Eastern Europe

Nancy Sinkoff, Rutgers University
Vilna on My Mind: The Polishness of Lucy S. Dawidowicz’s Turn to Neoconservatism

Jennifer Burns, University of Virginia
A Cold Warrior Before the Cold War: Ayn Rand as Russian Intellectual in America

Michael Kimmage, Catholic University
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and the Emptiness of American Conservatism

Comments: Audience

C201, Panel 26

Social Thought in the Progressive Era

Louise W. Knight, Northwestern University
The Ethical Limits of Rhetoric: Jane Addams and the Arguments for Women’s Suffrage

Richard L. Hughes, Illinois State University
From Jewish Ghetto to “Negro Invasion”: The Contested History of the Black Ghetto during the Progressive Era

Shaun S. Nichols, Harvard University
Creating a New Republic: Progressivism, Pluralism, and the Search for the Public Good, 1908-1930

Neil Jumonville, Florida State University
The Curious Case of Privacy

Commentator: Jackson Lears, Rutgers University

C202, Panel 27

Rock Critics as Public Intellectuals: Mass-Cultural Music Writing From the 60s to the Present

Chair: Nick Bromell, University of Massachusetts

Devon Powers, Drexel University
The Problem of Pop: Rock Criticism, Pop Intellectualism, and Postmodernity

Michael J. Kramer, Northwestern University
Creem Magazine and Rock Criticism's Public Intellectuals After the Sixties Counterculture

Daphne Carr, Columbia University
Lad Mags in the Post-PC Era: Rock Criticism, Gender, and Sexuality, 1990-2010

Commentator: Paul Anderson, University of Michigan

C203, Panel 28

Intellectuals and Rural Life from World War I to the Cold War

Todd Dresser, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Encounters with Carol Kennecott: Rural Sociology and Rural Community Development, 1919-1929

Gabriel Rosenberg, Brown University
'Low Modern’-izing the Family Farm: The Pronatalist Turn in the late-New Deal USDA

Daniel Immerwahr, University of California, Berkeley
Agrarian Intellectuals at Home and Abroad: Decentralism in U.S. Thought and Policy, 1935–1955

Commentator: Andrew Jewett, Harvard University

C204, Panel 29

Racial Politics, Intellectuals, and Academia

Lauren Kientz Anderson, University of Kentucky
Abram Harris’s Identity as an Intellectual and an Academic

Jason Schulman, Emory University
Contingencies of History: Herbert Gutman and the Politics of Family Discourse

Stephen Kercher, University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh
Academic Intellectuals, Race, and the Impact of Black Student Demonstrations in Wisconsin During the Late 1960s

Carl Pedersen, Copenhagen Business School
The Obama Dilemma: Confronting Race in the 21st Century

Commentator: Jonathan Scott Holloway, Yale University

C205, Panel 30

American Jewish Intellectuals: The “Old Left” and Beyond

Julian Nemeth, Brandeis University
Sidney Hook, Herbert Aptheker, and the Politics of Academic Freedom

David Weinfeld, New York University
Horace Kallen Reconsidered: Cultural Pluralism and Hybridity as Lived Experience

Ronnie Grinberg, University of Colorado, Boulder
An Often Overlooked Conservative: Midge Decter—A 'Scourge of Feminist Dogma’

Commentator: Tony Michels, University of Wisconsin-Madison

7:00-9:00 pm

Elebash Recital Hall

Plenary: Intellectual History for What?

Participants:
George Cotkin, Cal Poly
Rochelle Gurstein, Independent Scholar
Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Syracuse University
Wilfred McClay, University of Tennessee
David Steigerwald, The Ohio State University
Casey Nelson Blake, Columbia University