U.S. Intellectual History Blog

Hartman to Speak at USC

Andrew HartmanAndrew Hartman, a co-founder of S-USIH and one of the society’s regular bloggers, will give a talk at the University of Southern California on the Culture Wars and Academia, on February 25, 2013.  As stated in the announcement for his talk, “whether the culture wars in higher education during the 1980s and 1990s had political consequences is debatable. But that they had enduring historical significance is inarguable. Shouting matches about academia reverberated beyond the ivory tower to lay bare a crisis of national faith, demonstrating that the culture wars did not boil down to any one specific issue or even a set of issues. Rather, the culture wars often hinged on a more epistemological question about national identity: How should Americans think?”

Hartman is an associate professor of history at Illinois State University and his forthcoming book on the Culture Wars in America, entitled A War for the Soul of America, is under contract with the University of Chicago Press.