U.S. Intellectual History

Since I’m new to this blog, I thought I would introduce myself to readers by pointing to my regular blog, U.S. Intellectual History, which won the 2010 Cliopatria Award for “best group blog.” We are an academic blog but we feature plenty of political content. Here is a small sample of the work we do:

Andrew Hartman, “‘When the Zulus Produce a Tolstoy We Will Read Him’: Charles Taylor and the Politics of Recognition” In this post I explore some of the intellectual history of multiculturalism via Charles Taylor, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Franz Fanon, and Lynne Cheney, among others.

Ben Alpers, “The Strange Transatlantic Career of Neoliberalism” This was part of a long back-and-forth we had on neoliberalism (read it all here). Ben did some important spadework, disaggregating the original use of the concept “neoliberalism” in the United States, where it referred to a small group of Democrats led by Gary Hart who sought to mildly offer an alternative to the paleo-liberalism of politicians beholden to big unions, from the European and Latin American use of neoliberalism, which quickly became the global use of the term, and which related to capitalism on steroids.

David Sehat, “Wood on Lepore on presentism or, why Gordon Wood thinks Jill Lepore is an academic snob” David strongly disagrees with Gordon Wood’s critique of Jill Lepore, author of the widely discussed The Whites of Their Eyes: The Tea Party Revolution and the Battle Over American History. Is it snobbish to call out the Tea Partiers for their bad history?

Tim Lacy, “The Emotional Panoply of American Conservatism, 1964-Present” Tim offers an emotional history of American conservatism, or, he seeks to understand when and why conservatism began appealing to more Americans at the emotional level.

Ray Haberski, “War and ‘We’” In this essay Ray reflects upon the post-Vietnam crisis of American civil religion by way of examining the debate between theologians Stanley Hauerwas and Richard John Neuhaus.

Lauren Kientz Anderson, “Anyone Seen/Read The Help?” Lauren’s simple question turns into an interesting discussion on race and representation.

Andrew Hartman, “Do You Still Read George Nash?” This is less interesting for the content of the post than for the ensuing debate about the relative importance of racism to modern conservatism.

Our blog is an organ of the newly founded Society for U.S. Intellectual History (S-USIH). We welcome members who don’t happen to be academics. We host an annual conference at the CUNY Graduate Center in New York City. This year’s is November 17 and 18. There will be a multitude of compelling panels. Jacobin readers will especially be interested in the Friday night plenary on American Exceptionalism, with speakers Beth Bailey, Eric Foner, Michael Kazin, and Rogers Smith. Check out the entire program here.