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
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