James M. Banner Jr. and John R. Gillis (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2009
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226036564
- eISBN:
- 9780226036595
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226036595.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
In this collection, the memoirs of eleven historians provide a portrait of a formative generation of scholars. Born around the time of World War II, these historians came of age just before the ...
More
In this collection, the memoirs of eleven historians provide a portrait of a formative generation of scholars. Born around the time of World War II, these historians came of age just before the upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s and helped to transform both their discipline and the broader world of American higher education. The self-inventions they chronicle led, in many cases, to the invention of new fields—including women's and gender history, social history, and public history—that cleared paths in the academy and made the study of the past more capacious and broadly relevant. In these stories, aspiring historians will find inspiration and guidance, experienced scholars will see reflections of their own dilemmas and struggles, and all readers will discover an account of how today's seasoned historians embarked on their intellectual journeys.Less
In this collection, the memoirs of eleven historians provide a portrait of a formative generation of scholars. Born around the time of World War II, these historians came of age just before the upheavals of the 1960s and 1970s and helped to transform both their discipline and the broader world of American higher education. The self-inventions they chronicle led, in many cases, to the invention of new fields—including women's and gender history, social history, and public history—that cleared paths in the academy and made the study of the past more capacious and broadly relevant. In these stories, aspiring historians will find inspiration and guidance, experienced scholars will see reflections of their own dilemmas and struggles, and all readers will discover an account of how today's seasoned historians embarked on their intellectual journeys.
Leah N. Gordon
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226238449
- eISBN:
- 9780226238586
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226238586.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
Although social structural, political economic, psychological, and legal conceptions of racism competed from the 1920s through the mid 1940s, individualistic theories of the race issue proved ...
More
Although social structural, political economic, psychological, and legal conceptions of racism competed from the 1920s through the mid 1940s, individualistic theories of the race issue proved especially influential in postwar America. This book asks how and why racial individualism—which presented prejudice and discrimination as the root cause of racial conflict, centered individuals in the study of race relations, and suggested that one could secure racial justice by changing white minds and protecting African American rights—gained traction in the two decades following Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma (1944). A study in the racialized politics of knowledge production, the book examines institutions where social scientists, civil rights activists, and proponents of improved race relations debated the sources of and best ways to fight “the race problem.” Scientism, behavioralism, and methodological individualism intersected with antiradicalism, civil rights legal successes, rightward shifts in American liberalism, and the enduring appeal of uncontroversial tolerance education, the book argues, to favor individualistic approaches to racial research and reform. These dynamics proved influential despite ongoing critique—most notably in African American led academic spaces—of social theories that reduced racial oppression to individual prejudice and discrimination. The book traces the flowering a non-economic, power-evasive conception of racism, highlights the centrality of inflated assumptions about what education can accomplish to postwar racial liberalism, and investigates how antiracist scholar-activists negotiated competing theoretical and political commitments.Less
Although social structural, political economic, psychological, and legal conceptions of racism competed from the 1920s through the mid 1940s, individualistic theories of the race issue proved especially influential in postwar America. This book asks how and why racial individualism—which presented prejudice and discrimination as the root cause of racial conflict, centered individuals in the study of race relations, and suggested that one could secure racial justice by changing white minds and protecting African American rights—gained traction in the two decades following Gunnar Myrdal’s An American Dilemma (1944). A study in the racialized politics of knowledge production, the book examines institutions where social scientists, civil rights activists, and proponents of improved race relations debated the sources of and best ways to fight “the race problem.” Scientism, behavioralism, and methodological individualism intersected with antiradicalism, civil rights legal successes, rightward shifts in American liberalism, and the enduring appeal of uncontroversial tolerance education, the book argues, to favor individualistic approaches to racial research and reform. These dynamics proved influential despite ongoing critique—most notably in African American led academic spaces—of social theories that reduced racial oppression to individual prejudice and discrimination. The book traces the flowering a non-economic, power-evasive conception of racism, highlights the centrality of inflated assumptions about what education can accomplish to postwar racial liberalism, and investigates how antiracist scholar-activists negotiated competing theoretical and political commitments.
Ernst Breisach
- Published in print:
- 2003
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226072791
- eISBN:
- 9780226072814
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226072814.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
What does postmodernism mean for the future of history? Can one still write history in postmodernity? To answer questions such as these, this book provides an overview of postmodernism and its ...
More
What does postmodernism mean for the future of history? Can one still write history in postmodernity? To answer questions such as these, this book provides an overview of postmodernism and its complex relationship to history and historiography. Placing postmodern theories in their intellectual and historical contexts, the book shows how they are part of broad developments in Western culture. The book sees postmodernism as neither just a fad nor a universal remedy. It presents and critically evaluates the major views on history held by influential postmodernists, such as Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, and the new narrativists. Along the way, it introduces major debates among historians over postmodern theories of evidence, objectivity, meaning and order, truth, and the usefulness of history. The book also discusses new types of history that have emerged as a consequence of postmodernism, including cultural history, microhistory, and new historicism.Less
What does postmodernism mean for the future of history? Can one still write history in postmodernity? To answer questions such as these, this book provides an overview of postmodernism and its complex relationship to history and historiography. Placing postmodern theories in their intellectual and historical contexts, the book shows how they are part of broad developments in Western culture. The book sees postmodernism as neither just a fad nor a universal remedy. It presents and critically evaluates the major views on history held by influential postmodernists, such as Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, and the new narrativists. Along the way, it introduces major debates among historians over postmodern theories of evidence, objectivity, meaning and order, truth, and the usefulness of history. The book also discusses new types of history that have emerged as a consequence of postmodernism, including cultural history, microhistory, and new historicism.
David S. Brown
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- March 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226076409
- eISBN:
- 9780226076379
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226076379.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Historiography
Richard Hofstadter (1916–70) was America's most distinguished historian of the twentieth century. The author of several groundbreaking books, including The American Political Tradition, he was a ...
More
Richard Hofstadter (1916–70) was America's most distinguished historian of the twentieth century. The author of several groundbreaking books, including The American Political Tradition, he was a vigorous champion of the liberal politics that emerged from the New Deal. During his nearly thirty-year career, Hofstadter fought public campaigns against liberalism's most dynamic opponents, from McCarthy in the 1950s to Barry Goldwater and the Sun Belt conservatives in the 1960s. His opposition to the extreme politics of postwar America—articulated in his books, essays, and public lectures—marked him as one of the nation's most important and prolific public intellectuals. This biography explores Hofstadter's life within the context of the rise and fall of American liberalism. A fierce advocate of academic freedom, racial justice, and political pluralism, Hofstadter charted in his works the changing nature of American society from a provincial Protestant foundation to one based on the values of an urban and multiethnic nation. Hofstadter presciently saw in rural America's hostility to this cosmopolitanism signs of an anti-intellectualism that he believed was dangerously endemic in a mass democracy. By the end of a life cut short by leukemia, Hofstadter had won two Pulitzer Prizes, and his books had attracted international attention. Yet the Vietnam years culminated in a conservative reaction to his work that is still with us. Whether one agrees with Hofstadter's critics or with the noted historian John Higham, who insisted that Hofstadter was “the finest and also the most humane intelligence of our generation,” the importance of this seminal thinker cannot be denied.Less
Richard Hofstadter (1916–70) was America's most distinguished historian of the twentieth century. The author of several groundbreaking books, including The American Political Tradition, he was a vigorous champion of the liberal politics that emerged from the New Deal. During his nearly thirty-year career, Hofstadter fought public campaigns against liberalism's most dynamic opponents, from McCarthy in the 1950s to Barry Goldwater and the Sun Belt conservatives in the 1960s. His opposition to the extreme politics of postwar America—articulated in his books, essays, and public lectures—marked him as one of the nation's most important and prolific public intellectuals. This biography explores Hofstadter's life within the context of the rise and fall of American liberalism. A fierce advocate of academic freedom, racial justice, and political pluralism, Hofstadter charted in his works the changing nature of American society from a provincial Protestant foundation to one based on the values of an urban and multiethnic nation. Hofstadter presciently saw in rural America's hostility to this cosmopolitanism signs of an anti-intellectualism that he believed was dangerously endemic in a mass democracy. By the end of a life cut short by leukemia, Hofstadter had won two Pulitzer Prizes, and his books had attracted international attention. Yet the Vietnam years culminated in a conservative reaction to his work that is still with us. Whether one agrees with Hofstadter's critics or with the noted historian John Higham, who insisted that Hofstadter was “the finest and also the most humane intelligence of our generation,” the importance of this seminal thinker cannot be denied.
