Black Power on Campus: Looking for an Intellectual History

(This brief review of an older book is pertinent to USIH readers because the relative weaknesses of the book are directly related to the author’s lack of attention to intellectual history.)

The black power movement had a strong presence on campuses across the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, true at historically black colleges, such as Howard University, and at mostly white institutions, such as the University of Illinois. Black power on campuses was a movement of young people who were reacting to two forces: institutional barriers that transcended the de jure barriers of Jim Crow; and to the apparent failures of the earlier civil rights movement focus on assimilation and integration. It took the form of invented tradition: black power advocates, in response to the stereotypes about black culture and history that pervaded mainstream, white society, sought to accentuate and celebrate blackness, or a version of blackness. The celebration of blackness, of course, often constricted other forms of activism, and on campuses, often served to alienate some black students.

Joy Ann Williamson tells this history in Black Power on Campus: The University of Illinois, 1965-75 (2003), a useful and interesting case study, since the University of Illinois was over 98% white in the mid-1960s, and Champaign-Urbana was known to be overtly racist as a community. It is also a good case study because the majority of the black students on campus were from Chicago, 100 miles north of Champaign-Urbana, where black power and other forms of black nationalism had long flowered. Thus, it should have surprised nobody when tensions erupted on campus, as 250 black students were arrested for a sit-in at the student center on September 10, 1968. Somewhat ironically, just as the university took steps to admit more black students—in response to the emerging consensus that federal law required some form of affirmative action at public institutions—black students became far more militant in their demands. This irony was interpreted as unruliness by local whites, and by state legislators, who quickly enacted Draconian polices against student gatherings (that also targeted mostly white anti-war student protestors).

As Williamson tells it, black power was in part successful, as two institutional legacies of it remain on campus: a black studies program; and a black cultural center shared by students and the local black community. Williamson’s institutional history of these developments is thorough and instructive. She is especially good at dealing with the relationship between the Black Student Association (BSA), the organized manifestation of black student power, and the university, which ceded to some BSA demands so as to not be outpaced by inevitable changes taking place on campuses nationwide. For instance, the chancellor recognized that it would be a good move to create a black studies program well before the BSA demanded it, since hundreds of universities were following in the footsteps of San Francisco State College, the first to implement black studies—there, as a response to the student Third World Strike that shut down the campus and aroused political conservatives, including Governor Reagan. Williamson is great in detailing this history.

However, where Williamson is strong in institutional history, she is weaker in intellectual history. Despite her many claims about how conceptions of “blackness” changed to suit the movement, the reader never gets a sense of what this means. Few of the primary intellectuals sources of black power are cited or interpreted. This makes the text duller than need be. Where the author does include such sources, the text flies off the page. I’ll conclude by way of an example. The BSA defined blackness in terms of militancy. A poem from their newspaper Black Rap gives us a sense of this:

Black enough to belong to the BSA
but too white to come to meetings
Black enough to have lived in the ghetto
but too white to return
Black enough to understand our lingo
but too white to speak it
Black enough to wear an Afro
but too white to appreciate it
Black enough for your Honkey friends
but too white for me.

Black Power on Campus: Looking for an Intellectual History

(This brief review of an older book is pertinent to USIH readers because the relative weaknesses of the book are directly related to the author’s lack of attention to intellectual history.)

The black power movement had a strong presence on campuses across the United States in the late 1960s and early 1970s, true at historically black colleges, such as Howard University, and at mostly white institutions, such as the University of Illinois. Black power on campuses was a movement of young people who were reacting to two forces: institutional barriers that transcended the de jure barriers of Jim Crow; and to the apparent failures of the earlier civil rights movement focus on assimilation and integration. It took the form of invented tradition: black power advocates, in response to the stereotypes about black culture and history that pervaded mainstream, white society, sought to accentuate and celebrate blackness, or a version of blackness. The celebration of blackness, of course, often constricted other forms of activism, and on campuses, often served to alienate some black students.

Joy Ann Williamson tells this history in Black Power on Campus: The University of Illinois, 1965-75 (2003), a useful and interesting case study, since the University of Illinois was over 98% white in the mid-1960s, and Champaign-Urbana was known to be overtly racist as a community. It is also a good case study because the majority of the black students on campus were from Chicago, 100 miles north of Champaign-Urbana, where black power and other forms of black nationalism had long flowered. Thus, it should have surprised nobody when tensions erupted on campus, as 250 black students were arrested for a sit-in at the student center on September 10, 1968. Somewhat ironically, just as the university took steps to admit more black students—in response to the emerging consensus that federal law required some form of affirmative action at public institutions—black students became far more militant in their demands. This irony was interpreted as unruliness by local whites, and by state legislators, who quickly enacted Draconian polices against student gatherings (that also targeted mostly white anti-war student protestors).

As Williamson tells it, black power was in part successful, as two institutional legacies of it remain on campus: a black studies program; and a black cultural center shared by students and the local black community. Williamson’s institutional history of these developments is thorough and instructive. She is especially good at dealing with the relationship between the Black Student Association (BSA), the organized manifestation of black student power, and the university, which ceded to some BSA demands so as to not be outpaced by inevitable changes taking place on campuses nationwide. For instance, the chancellor recognized that it would be a good move to create a black studies program well before the BSA demanded it, since hundreds of universities were following in the footsteps of San Francisco State College, the first to implement black studies—there, as a response to the student Third World Strike that shut down the campus and aroused political conservatives, including Governor Reagan. Williamson is great in detailing this history.

However, where Williamson is strong in institutional history, she is weaker in intellectual history. Despite her many claims about how conceptions of “blackness” changed to suit the movement, the reader never gets a sense of what this means. Few of the primary intellectuals sources of black power are cited or interpreted. This makes the text duller than need be. Where the author does include such sources, the text flies off the page. I’ll conclude by way of an example. The BSA defined blackness in terms of militancy. A poem from their newspaper Black Rap gives us a sense of this:

Black enough to belong to the BSA
but too white to come to meetings
Black enough to have lived in the ghetto
but too white to return
Black enough to understand our lingo
but too white to speak it
Black enough to wear an Afro
but too white to appreciate it
Black enough for your Honkey friends
but too white for me.

Hughes on Mizruchi's The Rise of Multicultural America

Review of Susan L. Mizruchi's The Rise of Multicultural America: Economy and Print Culture, 1865-1915 (University of North Carolina Press, 2008). ISBN: 978-0-8078-3250-9, $65 (cloth); ISBN: 978-0-8078-5912-4, $ 24.95 (paper). 368 pp., 61/8 x 91/4, 21 illus., notes, index.

Guest Review by Richard L. Hughes
Illinois State University

Historians often argue that the fifty years between 1865 and 1915 contained the most dramatic period of change in American history. By the First World War, individuals born in antebellum America found themselves living in a modern nation that often bore little resemblance to the nation they grew up in. The rise of industrialization, corporate economic growth, and urbanization, coupled with dramatic changes in race and ethnicity due to emancipation and unprecedented immigration, forged what Susan L. Mizruchi identifies as "the first multicultural modern capitalist society." Not surprisingly, such developments also revolutionized the American publishing industry and The Rise of Multicultural America explores the relationship between economic changes and an increasingly pluralistic print culture that ranged from classic American literature to the burgeoning field of modern advertising. The result is a "literary-cultural study" that suggests that American capitalism promoted both a multicultural society and resistance to such changes in such a way as to create a broader yet continually contested modern American identity.

A professor of English with an interest in American literature, Mizruchi examines published materials associated with the aftermath of the Civil War, race and Reconstruction, Native Americans, immigrants, marketing and corporate America, labor, and utopian visions of American society. ...Continue reading the review here.

Hughes on Mizruchi's The Rise of Multicultural America

Review of Susan L. Mizruchi's The Rise of Multicultural America: Economy and Print Culture, 1865-1915 (University of North Carolina Press, 2008). ISBN: 978-0-8078-3250-9, $65 (cloth); ISBN: 978-0-8078-5912-4, $ 24.95 (paper). 368 pp., 61/8 x 91/4, 21 illus., notes, index.

Guest Review by Richard L. Hughes
Illinois State University

Historians often argue that the fifty years between 1865 and 1915 contained the most dramatic period of change in American history. By the First World War, individuals born in antebellum America found themselves living in a modern nation that often bore little resemblance to the nation they grew up in. The rise of industrialization, corporate economic growth, and urbanization, coupled with dramatic changes in race and ethnicity due to emancipation and unprecedented immigration, forged what Susan L. Mizruchi identifies as "the first multicultural modern capitalist society." Not surprisingly, such developments also revolutionized the American publishing industry and The Rise of Multicultural America explores the relationship between economic changes and an increasingly pluralistic print culture that ranged from classic American literature to the burgeoning field of modern advertising. The result is a "literary-cultural study" that suggests that American capitalism promoted both a multicultural society and resistance to such changes in such a way as to create a broader yet continually contested modern American identity.

A professor of English with an interest in American literature, Mizruchi examines published materials associated with the aftermath of the Civil War, race and Reconstruction, Native Americans, immigrants, marketing and corporate America, labor, and utopian visions of American society. ...Continue reading the review here.

Tim's Light Reading (7/30/09)

1. This might qualify as a bit dated, but I'm not sure anyone here noted the new autobiographical collection of essays, titled Becoming Historians and published by the University of Chicago Press. Here is an e-mail interview between InsideHigherEd's Scott Jaschik and the book's editors, James M. Banner Jr. and John R. Gillis. The collection includes essays from Rhys Isaac, Joan Wallach Scott, Dwight T. Pitcaithley, Linda Gordon, David A. Hollinger, Maureen Murphy Nutting, Franklin W. Knight, Temma Kaplan, Paul Robinson, and the editors.

2. A few weeks ago I learned of a new print publication, The POINT Magazine. It is a new Chicago-based journal seeking to survey the contemporary scene from an intellectual angle. They might be interested in your idea for an article connecting your scholarly interest to today's news? Here's the TOC for their Spring 09 issue.

3. This NYT article by Carter Dougherty narrates a renewed Catholic interest, particularly in Germany, in a third economic way between capitalism and socialism. Of course the instigation was the early July release of Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical, "Charity in Truth." But the article's title, "Catholicism as Antidote to Turbo-Capitalism," reveals that the third way is really just a more ethical market-based structure.

4. Brill's ongoing "Studies in Intellectual History" book series contains some titles that may be of interest to USIH readers. Perhaps they would be receptive to your book proposal?

5. Elizabethtown College prof David Brown comments at HNN on his new book about Midwestern voices in the history profession. I haven't yet read his intriguing intellectual biography on Hofstadter, so I better get going before I'm another book behind.

6. InsideHigherEd's Scott Jaschik e-mail interviews Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze, professor of the history of mathematics at the University of Agder, in Norway, on his new book, Mathematicians Fleeing from Nazi Germany: Individual Fates and Global Impact (Princeton Press). Being known as a land of opportunity and tolerance, relatively speaking during the 1930s, increased the net mathematics brain power of the United States during tumultuous times.

7. I want to wish Sterling Fluharty well as he begins an exploration of life outside the history profession. His weblog, PhDinHistory, has quantitatively explored the profession for the last few years and forced some qualitative changes in my opinion about the state of the field.

Tim's Light Reading (7/30/09)

1. This might qualify as a bit dated, but I'm not sure anyone here noted the new autobiographical collection of essays, titled Becoming Historians and published by the University of Chicago Press. Here is an e-mail interview between InsideHigherEd's Scott Jaschik and the book's editors, James M. Banner Jr. and John R. Gillis. The collection includes essays from Rhys Isaac, Joan Wallach Scott, Dwight T. Pitcaithley, Linda Gordon, David A. Hollinger, Maureen Murphy Nutting, Franklin W. Knight, Temma Kaplan, Paul Robinson, and the editors.

2. A few weeks ago I learned of a new print publication, The POINT Magazine. It is a new Chicago-based journal seeking to survey the contemporary scene from an intellectual angle. They might be interested in your idea for an article connecting your scholarly interest to today's news? Here's the TOC for their Spring 09 issue.

3. This NYT article by Carter Dougherty narrates a renewed Catholic interest, particularly in Germany, in a third economic way between capitalism and socialism. Of course the instigation was the early July release of Pope Benedict XVI's encyclical, "Charity in Truth." But the article's title, "Catholicism as Antidote to Turbo-Capitalism," reveals that the third way is really just a more ethical market-based structure.

4. Brill's ongoing "Studies in Intellectual History" book series contains some titles that may be of interest to USIH readers. Perhaps they would be receptive to your book proposal?

5. Elizabethtown College prof David Brown comments at HNN on his new book about Midwestern voices in the history profession. I haven't yet read his intriguing intellectual biography on Hofstadter, so I better get going before I'm another book behind.

6. InsideHigherEd's Scott Jaschik e-mail interviews Reinhard Siegmund-Schultze, professor of the history of mathematics at the University of Agder, in Norway, on his new book, Mathematicians Fleeing from Nazi Germany: Individual Fates and Global Impact (Princeton Press). Being known as a land of opportunity and tolerance, relatively speaking during the 1930s, increased the net mathematics brain power of the United States during tumultuous times.

7. I want to wish Sterling Fluharty well as he begins an exploration of life outside the history profession. His weblog, PhDinHistory, has quantitatively explored the profession for the last few years and forced some qualitative changes in my opinion about the state of the field.

Second Annual USIH Conference: Program

________________________________________

Program for the Second Annual USIH Conference
Center for the Humanities
The Graduate Center
CUNY
November 12-13, 2009

[Updated: 11/9/2009 9:20 AM CST]
________________________________________

Program Notes:

1. All functions will take place in one of seven places: Martin E. Segal Theatre and Rooms C201-205, C197.
2. Conference headquarters, beverage service, and publisher tables will be in C197. This room will open at 3 pm on Thursday, Nov. 12.
3. No money will change hands at the conference. All registration fees should be paid prior to, or after, attendance. The cost is $35 and checks should be sent to: The Center for the Humanities, c/o Michael Washburn, Assistant Director, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, 365 Fifth Avenue, Room 5103, New York, NY 10016.
________________________________________


Thursday, Nov. 12, 2009


1-3 pm

Martin E. Segal Theatre, Plenary Address

"Seeing, Hearing, and Writing the End of Modernity: From Reading Pragmatism to Watching Movies"
James Livingston, Rutgers University


3:30-5:30 pm

Martin E. Segal Theatre, Panel 1

Creating and Contesting Intellectual Traditions in 20th-Century American Thought

Black and Chicano Power in the Academy: The Intellectual Origins of Identity Politics
Andrew Hartman, Illinois State University

Antifoundationalism on Native Grounds
Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Black Progressives: The Politics of Knowledge in the Age of Washington
James Anders Levy, Hofstra University

Commentator: Martin Woessner, City University of New York

C201, Panel 2

Reconsidering Pragmatism and the Cold War Era

‘Postmodern, Bourgeois, Cold War Liberalism’: Rethinking Rorty and Late Twentieth Century Pragmatism
Anthony Hutchison, University of Nottingham

Pragmatism and the Civil Rights Movement: A (Re)consideration
Peter Kuryla, Belmont University

Pragmatism and American Thought at Mid-Century
Jeffrey Coker, Belmont University

Commentator: Ray Haberski, Marian College

C202, Panel 3

Intellectual Legacy of the 1960s

Confronting a “crisis in historical perspective”: Gabriel Kolko, Walter LaFeber and the History of American Empire during the Late Cold War
Nick Witham, University of Nottingham

David Horowitz, Todd Gitlin, and the Debate Over the Legacy of the 1960s
Jason D. Roberts, Northern Virginia Community College

Slaughterhouse at Forty: Kurt Vonnegut's Dresden Novel, Revisited
Gregory Sumner, University of Detroit Mercy

Commentator: David Engerman, Brandeis University

C203, Panel 4

Abstracting Technology and Science

Mimeographed Community: The mimeographed report and the rise of intellectual communities in early 20th century U.S.
Sylwester Ratowt, American Philosophical Society

Social Constructions of Nature and the Creation of the American City
Michael J. Rawson, Brooklyn College

Ambiguous Intellectual Boundary-Work of U.S. Demographers in Facing Postwar World Population Growth
Yu-Ling Huang, SUNY-Binghamton

Commentator: Neil B. Miller, Independent Scholar/H-Ideas Advisory Board

C204, Panel 5

Bridging the Class Divide in Progressive America

Wealth Taxation and Redistribution – Then and Now
Alexandra Wagner, Brandeis University

Corn-Pone Opinions: Liberalism and Political Economy in “The Age of Discussion”
Mark Schmeller, Northeastern Illinois University

Beyond Uplift: Democratizing Conversation in Progressive-era Chicago
Amy Kittelstrom, Sonoma State University/Princeton University

Commentator: John Recchiuti, Mount Union College

C205, Panel 6

“Brownie, You're Doing a Heck of a Job”: Conservative Ideology and the American State During the Age of Reagan

Conservative Ideology & Policymaking in the Age of Reagan
Timothy Kneeland, Nazareth College

Ronald Reagan’s Pragmatic Conservatism
Jon Peterson, Ohio University

Hurricane Andrew and Reagan’s American State
Natalie Schuster, University of Houston

Commentator: Jeffrey Bloodworth, Gannon University


6:30-8:30 pm

Martin E. Segal Theatre, John Patrick Diggins Retrospective

Neil Jumonville, Florida State University
Martin J. Burke, CUNY Graduate Center/Lehman College
James Oakes, CUNY Graduate Center
James Livingston, Rutgers University
Andrew Robertson, CUNY Lehman College
Matthew J. Cotter, Chair, CUNY Graduate Center


Friday, Nov. 13, 2009


9-11 am

Martin E. Segal Theatre, Panel 7

African Across the Atlantic: Ideas, Identity, and Ideologies

‘Quite High Minded’: African-American Appropriations of Antebellum Concepts of Benevolence and Intellectual Development
Jeffrey Mullins, St. Cloud State University

Matthew J. Hudock, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Delaware: “Africa vs. ‘Africa’: Redefining African Identity in the 19th Century”
Matthew Hudock, University of Delaware

The African American Press and the Parisian Presse Noire: A Transnational Comparison of Racial Ideologies and Protests, 1885-1935
Jennifer Moses, University of Delaware

Commentator: Wilson J. Moses, Pennsylvania State University

C201, Panel 8

Mysticism & the Religion of Democracy in Social Movements

Jane Addams, Horizontal Mysticism & the “Subjective Necessity” to Oppose War
John Pettegrew, Lehigh University

The New Thought Movement and the Emergence of the Feminist Self
Lilian Barger, University of Texas-Dallas

Title---TBD
David Bailey, Michigan State University

Commentator: Matthew Hedstrom, University of Virginia

C202, Panel 9

The Intellectual and Policy Roots of Our Economic Crises

Thorstein Veblen: a Genuine Historical Economist: On the conceptual link between History and Economy in Veblen's early work
Noam Yuran, Ben Gurion University

The Intellectual Roots of the Financial Crisis
James R. Hackney, Northeastern University

“The Follies of Individualism” Credit Men and the Social Gospel, 1893-1925
David Sellers Smith, Northwestern University

Commentator: Daniel J. Walkowitz, New York University

** Canceled ** -- C203, Panel 10 -- ** Canceled **

Intellectuals, Culture and Economic Crisis

Politics without Hope: or, History, Post-History, and Alternatives
John Michael, University of Rochester

The Recurrence of Crisis, the Crisis of Recurrence
Paul Smith, George Mason University

On the Road Again: Cinematic Populisms, Then and Now
Sharon Willis, University of Rochester

Commentator: Casey N. Blake, Columbia University

C204, Panel 11

Culture, Thought, and Politics During The Cold War

"Who Is Afraid of Martha Graham?” A new perspective on Martha Graham’s tour to Great Britain in 1954 and its importance for the cultural diplomacy of the Cold War
Camelia Lenart, University at Albany

"The Trade Journal of the Cold War": The New Leader and the Problem of Liberal Anticommunism
Peter Aigner, CUNY Graduate Center

Archibald MacLeish, Robert Oppenheimer, and “The Conquest of America”
Gary Grieve-Carlson, Lebanon Valley College
Michael Day, Lebanon Valley College

Commentator: David Steigerwald, The Ohio State University

C205, Panel 12

Catholics Looking Inside Out: Catholic Intellectual Contributions to Framing the Cold War

Ought Catholics Be Liberal? John Courtney Murray and John Cogley Face the Cold War
Ray Haberski, Marian College

Aquinas and the World State: Catholic Intellectual Undercurrents of the Early Cold War Movement for World Federalism
Tim Lacy, University of Illinois at Chicago

Edmund A. Walsh, S.J., “Ph.D.,” and the Irony of Intellectual Politics in the Early Cold War, 1945-1952
Patrick McNamara, Diocese of Brooklyn

Commentator: James McCartin, Seton Hall University


1-3 pm

Martin E. Segal Theatre, Panel 13

The Varieties of Conservatism

“A Position That Is Neither Liberal Nor Conservative”: The Goldwin Readers and the Spread of Straussian Political Thought in 1960s America
Benjamin Alpers, University of Oklahoma

Cultural Criticism on the Eve of the Linguistic Turn and Thick Description: Richard Hofstadter’s Analysis of the American Rightwing Extremism for the Fund for the Republic, 1958-1959
Robert Faber, Bradley University

Commentator: Casey N. Blake, Columbia University

C201, Panel 14

The New Left and its Legacies

Student Radicalism and Academic Freedom in the 1960s
Julian Nemeth, Brandeis University

Pornography and the 'Marketplace of Ideas': From Feminist Activism to Feminist Legal Theory in the Anti-Pornography Movement
Clara Altman, Brandeis University

Scaring the Shit Out of Honky America: the Weather Underground, the Transnational Global Left and 'Enlightenment' Cosmopolitanism
Jeffrey Bloodworth, Gannon University

Commentator: Alice Echols, University of Southern California

C202, Panel 15

Reconciling Religion With Modern Life

John Dewey on Religion and Religious Experience
Marina Ozernov, University of Texas-Dallas

Two Faiths, Christianity and Culture: Religious Response to the Promotion of Culture in the Late-Nineteenth Century United States
Ryan T.A. Swihart, Baruch College /Manhattan College/CUNY

“A Hierarchy of Rights”: Internationalizing the First Amendment in the American Century
Fred Beuttler, Historian’s Office, U.S. House of Representatives

Commentator: David Sehat, Georgia State University

C203, Panel 16

Culture and History

Fashion Theory in U.S. Intellectual Historical Context
Damayanthie Eluwawalage, SUNY-Oneonta

Interpreting a “Hieroglyphic” Civilization: Warren Susman, the 1920s, and the Modernist Tradition
Paul Murphy, Grand Valley State University

The Historical Man: Henry Chapman Mercer and the Transcendent Aesthetics of History
Kathleen Brennan, CUNY Graduate Center

Commentator: Joan Shelley Rubin, University of Rochester

C204, Panel 17

Science, Salvation, and Rationalism: Innovations in Nineteenth-Century American Thought

“Uninteresting truth and interesting falsehood”: Thoreau, Indians, and Nineteenth-Century Religious Liberalism
Daniel Dillard, Florida State University

The ‘Good Minister’: Emerson, Hedge, and Transcendental Religion
Ryan Tobler, University of Chicago

“I Object to the Names Deism and Infidelity”: Theodore Parker and the Boundaries of Christianity in Antebellum America
Benjamin Park, University of Edinburgh

Commentator: Charles Capper, Boston University

C205, Panel 18

Race and Identity Formulations

The Byrd Affair: Black and White Conflict in the Early Days of the New Deal
Lauren Kientz, Michigan State University

“A Process of Culture”: The White Supremacy Campaign and the Christian Educators of Trinity College, 1894-1903
Jennifer Eckel, University of Texas-Austin

The Psychological Turn in the History of American Justice: Segregation and Empathy from Plessy to Brown
Paul A. Dambowic, Pratt Institute

Commentator: K.J. Greene, Thomas Jefferson School of Law


3:30-5:30 pm

Martin E. Segal Theatre, Panel 19

The Psychology of 20th Century America

Moving the Body: Experimenting with Psychological Aesthetics
Susan Lanzoni, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

On Whose Shoulders Does Democracy Rest? Harold Lasswell and the Crisis in the American Social Sciences
Robert Genter, Nassau Community College

The shared liberal orientation of B.F. Skinner and Carl Rogers
Theodore Wisniewski, Simon Fraser University

Commentator: Elisabeth Lasch-Quinn, Syracuse University

C201, Panel 20

Objectivity, Cultural Criticism and the History of Ideas in the American Academy

Revising the Myth of the Myth of Objectivity in American Historiography
Eileen Cheng, Sarah Lawrence College

Back to the Future: The History of Ideas after the Linguistic and Culture Turns
Daniel Wickberg, University of Texas, Dallas

Masks of Perfect Clarity: A Semiological Analysis of the Cold War Cultural Criticism of Jacques Barzun
W. Colin Church, University of Colorado

Commentator: James Kloppenberg, Harvard University

C202, Panel 21

Linguistic Theory, Philosophy, and Literature

Derrida and US Historiography: Then and now
Andrew Dunstall, Macquarie University

The Presence of the Past: A New Answer to the Riddle of Paul de Man
Gregory Jones-Katz, Husson University

Commentator: Paul Anderson, University of Michigan

C203, Panel 22

To Market, To Market: American Thinkers Confront Twentieth-Century Capitalism

‘Progressive Capitalism’ or ‘Creeping Socialism’?: Henry Wallace, Full Employment and Sixty Million Jobs
Mike O'Connor, Georgia State University

Frederick W. Taylor: The Optimistic Science of Scientific Management
Caitlin Rosenthal, Harvard University

From Entrepreneurship to the Corporation: Samuel Gompers Adjusts
Claire Goldstene, University of Maryland

Commentator: Jennifer Burns, University of Virginia

C204, Panel 23

Forgetting Social Science: Reviving Lost Histories of Social Scientific Thought in America

“Now I am an Imperialist” and Then I was Gone: Fredrick Starr, American Social Science the Tensions of Liberal Internationalism
Brian Foster, Carleton University

Demography’s Darling, Sociology’s Suppressed Memory and the Guise of Culture in Population Science
Karen Foster, Carleton University

"Men are less prone to learn from their victims": the sociological education of Emily Greene Balch's cosmopolitanism
Andrew Johnston, Carleton University

Commentator: Daniel Geary, Trinity College (Dublin)


6:30-8:30 pm

Martin E. Segal Theatre

Assessing the Legacy of the 1977 Wingspread Conference

David Hollinger, University of California-Berkeley
Thomas Bender, New York University
Dorothy Ross, Johns Hopkins University
David Hall, Harvard University

Commentator: Charles Capper, Boston University