In a two part series on the top young historians/professors under 45 years of age HNN examines both the up and coming young historians in the field, and those that are well on their way to success in their field of study. We have polled some of the most prominent universities and historians in North America to create our list. Among the historians that were consulted for this feature include: David Bell of Johns Hopkins University, Jack R. Censer of George Mason University, Frank Couvares of Amherst College, David Herbert Donald of Harvard University, Paul Freedman of Yale University, Michael Gomez of New York University, Lynn Hunt of UCLA, Brian Lewis of McGill University, David Kennedy of Stanford University, Victor Koschmann of Cornell University, Luther Spoehr and Gordon Wood at Brown University, and Sean Wilentz of Princeton University. In total we received over 50 nominees for our feature.
We at HNN reviewed all the nominees, the criteria we looked for were the most outstanding historians in terms of their excellence both inside the university classroom and contributing to the historical profession beyond the walls of academia. Publishing was a major factor, all those chosen have at least one book published; all the historians have been award winning and with sucessful fellowship and grants to their credit; they are leaders in academia, involved in leaderships positions in their departments, many have been chairs of their departments, or heads of university related research institutes; they are popular and sought after professors. Additionally those chosen add unique perspectives to the historical profession, ranging from journalistic endeavours, to literary pursuits to appearances in the media including television specials and news coverage.
The second part of the feature looks at the historians well on their way, those in their late thirties and early forties. These historians have been sucessful in becoming prominent experts in their chosen areas.
Teaching Position:
Area of Research: Revolutionary and early national American history
Education: Ph.D., University of Virginia, 1998
Major Publications:Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic
(2001); the editor of Alexander Hamilton: Writings (2001).
Awards:Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic
(2001),won the best book award from the Society for Historians of the
Early American Republic
Additional Info: Freeman appeared in television documentaries for the
Discovery Channel, the History Channel, and PBS.
Personal Anecdote:
I've always thought of myself as an"archive rat." I love exploring manuscript collections, pouring over letters and random bits of paper, and - occasionally - discovering something new, revealing or exciting. Granted, sometimes one simply finds something odd, like the wad of New York Republican George Clinton's hair that I found carefully wrapped up in a paper packet, or the small folded bit of eighteenth-century paper labeled"Grass" and containing, logically enough, little bits of eighteenth-century grass. Other times, one gets the feeling that a particular manuscript collection has been moldering in the dust of centuries until saved from oblivion by your call slip; one such occasion produced a collection of papers from an eighteenth-century Virginian that (honestly) reeked of leather and dirt - perhaps a whiff of eighteenth-century Virginia, though its main impact was to inspire a desperate desire to wash my hands.
In the course of my research, I've discovered a related historical passion which I've dubbed"Indiana Jones history" - historical research that calls for a real spirit of adventure. For example, when researching Alexander Hamilton (many years ago, long before graduate school), I decided to go to the island of Nevis where he was supposedly born, and live there for a few weeks. Admittedly, my arm didn't need twisting at the idea of spending a month in the Caribbean. But at the time, Nevis was not exactly tourist (or research) friendly, leading to a continuing series of adventures. For example, to get to the island's legal record, I had to pay a stamp tax - which required finding the stamp man - who worked only certain hours of certain days, known only to him. My sotto voce complaints about the cursed stamps - Why do I need a stamp anyway? And who does this stamp man think he is? - eventually led to the realization that I was experiencing my own little echo of the American Revolution.
Along similar lines, while revising the dueling chapter in Affairs of Honor, I asked a friend who knew about such things - Len Travers - to arrange for me to shoot a black powder dueling pistol. Len kindly obliged by contacting a friend from a local police department, Officer Victor Duphily, who took us to a police firing range and taught me how to shoot a pistol. I have to confess that it was oddly satisfying. Not much of a kick, but a nice full pop and a dramatic puff of smoke soon after. Of course, when Officer Duphily allowed me to shoot his regulation police sidearm, I had an entirely different experience. Shooting this gun really felt like holding death in your hand, and after one shot I handed it back, very happy not to shoot another such pistol again.
Obviously, I've enjoyed such experiences, but not just because they've been fun. Shooting a dueling pistol, paying a stamp tax, or simply rummaging among eighteenth-century documents all offer a little whiff of a past reality, a smell or a sound or a sensation that at least whispers back to the past. Sensory research can't quite be footnoted, but it can be an intensely powerful source of scholarly inspiration.
Teaching Position: Chair, History and Literature Program
Professor of History, Harvard University
Area of Research: Early America
Education: Ph.D. Yale University American Studies, 1995
Major Publications:New York Burning: Liberty, Slavery and Conspiracy in Eighteenth Century Manhattan (2005;
A is for American: Letters and Other Characters in the Newly United States (2002);
The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity (1999), and
editor of Encounters in the New World: A History in Documents (1998)
Awards:Bancroft Prize and the Phi Beta Kappa Society's Ralph Waldo Emerson Award for The Name of War: King Philip's War and the Origins of American Identity (1999)
Additional Info: Lepore is cofounder and coeditor of the Web magazine Common-place (www.common-place.org). The website, which is sponsored by the American Antiquarian Society and the Florida State University Department of History, describes itself as a" common place for exploring and exchanging ideas about early American history and culture.
Personal Anecdote:
Like nearly everyone else, I spent most of graduate school drinking
coffee. But, unlike everyone else, I had a rule about it: drink alone.
When I set about writing my dissertation, I put myself on strict social
quarantine from eight to four every day, since I knew that, otherwise, I'd
spend much of my time in coffeehouses near campus, complaining about how
slow the writing was going. It's not that I didn't want to
complain. Boy did I ever. But I was running out of money and had
piles of student loans to pay, and I needed to finish that
dissertation. Also, I had something I wanted to say, pretty
urgenetly, and nothing concentrates the mind as much as
sitting at your desk, with no one to talk to. When I'm writing, I don't
answer email and, though I answer the phone, I'm told I'm impossibly rude
to anyone who calls (and I never can remember if anyone did). Hell, I was
probably rude to the dog. It's harder
to be so isolated now; students need to reach me and someone at my house
always needs tylenol or a diaper change. But if my writing days are
shorter, and come less often, I still drink my coffee alone.
Teaching Position: Professor of History, Harvard University,
2006-, Formerly Professor of History at Fordham University,
he has also served as co-director of the Center for Medieval
Studies and director of graduate studies for the Department of History.
Area of Research: Medieval History
Education: Ph.D 1994, University of Michigan
Major Publications:Imaginary Cartographies: Possession and Identity in Late
Medieval Marseille (Cornell University Press, 1999); The Consumption of Justice: Emotions, Publicity
and Legal Culture in Marseille, 1264-1423 (Cornell University Press, 2003).
Awards:Imaginary Cartographies was awarded the Social Science History
Association's President�s Book Award in 1999 and the American History Association's
Herbert Baxter Adams Prize in 2001. Smail's The Consumption of Justice: Emotions,
Publicity and Legal Culture in Marseille, 1264-1423, was the
recent co-winner of the Hurst Prize of the Law and Society Association.
Personal Anecdote: When graduate students don't get jobs they invariably assume it's their fault. Dissertation not sufficiently innovative; the teaching just above average; maybe horrors I'm just not smart enough. Their advisers can tell them the job market is just a crap-shoot, but it's not easy to believe this, and all too tempting just to blame oneself. So when I try to persuade disappointed graduate students that it really is a crap-shoot I often tell the story of how I just barely survived the job search myself. Having done my dissertation research in 1990-91, I was reasonably far along in 1992-93, so I decided to test the market, as it were, with five or ten applications. These translated into one AHA interview, in the Pit, during which I am sure I convinced the committee I was the last person it would ever want to hire. Disappointed but not discouraged, I worked hard on other projects to avoid finishing my dissertation so that I could remain a student for a little longer. The following year (1993-94) was better; the dozens of letters I sent out turned into eight AHA interviews, and I could tell I was moving up in the world because most of them were in interview suites. But these eight interviews turned into exactly zero campus invitations. Was it me? Did they have other priorities? My advisers tried to persuade me to believe the latter, and I did my best to keep the faith. I finished my dissertation in the summer of 1994, found an adjunct position, and soldiered ahead, applying for practically anything that moved: medieval, European, theoretical, you name it. Dozens more letters went out. By December, I was facing some rather grim news: the eight interviews in 1994 shrank to five in 1995, even though I actually had a dissertation in hand this time around. I was adjuncting at a school that had a position in my field, and doing a pretty good job, but even they didn?t want to interview me. Sighting down the slope, I could see myself with just a couple of interviews the following year?and then the dreaded nothing. Well, I thought, if nothing works out in 1995 then I'll have one last shot
before moving on. My wife had a decent job and I was sure I could find something
interesting outside of academia. Four of the five interviews at the 1995 AHA in Chicago
led nowhere. The fifth, almost to my surprise, garnered a campus interview. I worked
feverishly on syllabuses. I drafted and redrafted a job talk. I wondered what I'd wear.
The interview was actually rather enjoyable, but I wasn't all that surprised when days
passed without the phone ringing. Somehow, I learned that I was their second candidate.
Weeks went by. Of course, everything turned out fine in the end, because the top
candidate (who has gone on to have a marvelous career, incidentally) had three job
offers something I couldn't have imagined in my wildest dreams, and the university was
content to make do with second best. Lots of things had conspired against me, not the
least of which was a rather muddled dissertation (though I defend myself by saying that
the sources were unusual and awfully difficult to use) on a subject that, at the time,
was many removes away from the hot topics of the day. But without this rather lucky
chance I am fairly certain I would have ended up doing something outside of academia,
like many others with similar capabilities but less luck. The moral of the tale, I
think, is that search committees can never hope to get it exactly right, and no one
should expect them to. Departments have their own priorities, and are as subject to
the winds of fashion as any consumer. Serendipidity and blind luck play a large role.
And scholars do mature after graduate school in ways that no search committee could
ever be expected to divine. None of this will ease the pain of not getting through the
clumsy, misshapen portal through which every academic has to pass, but knowing that it
is a crap-shoot may help someone get on with life if he or she doesn't have the sort of
luck that I had.
Teaching Position: Professor of History, McGill University
(Chair of McGill's Department of History, 1997-1998)
Area of Research: Modern United States Political History
Education: Ph.D, Harvard University, 1988
Major Publications:Morning in America: How Ronald Reagan Invented the 1980s
(Princeton Univ. Press, 2005); Mr. and Mrs. President: From the Trumans to the
Clintons (Univ. Press of Kansas, 2000) (an updated version of
Affairs of State: The Rise and Rejection of the Presidential
Couple Since World War II) (Free Press, 1997); See How They Ran:
The Changing Role of the
Presidential Candidate (Harvard Univ. Press, 1996, Free Press, 1991);
Why I Am A Zionist (BJEC, 2002), will soon be released in its third printing.
Troy is currently writing a new book on Hillary Clinton's tenure as
first lady which will be published in 2006 by the University Press of Kansas as
part of their Modern First Ladies series.
Awards: Social Science and Humanities Research Council of Canada
Research Grant for $44,000, 1998-2001;for $57,000, 1994-1997;
Research Grants from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation
1987, 1994; Gerald Ford Foundation 1990, 1994; Harry Truman
Library Institute 1987, 1993.
Additional Info: Troy comments frequently about presidential politics on
television and in print, with recently published articles, reviews and comments in,
among others, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal,
The Washington Post, The Montreal Gazette, The National Post, and
the Wilson Quarterly among others. He has appeared on CNN, C-SPAN, MSNBC, PBS,
CTV, and CBC. From 1998 to 2000 he was a regular"Monday Columnist" appearing as the"resident philosopher" of CBC-TV"Midday" Show. Recent television appearances include
Election Night coverage on CTV News with Lloyd Robertson, and the PBS First Ladies'
Special produced by MacNeil-Lehrer Productions. Maclean's Magazine has repeatedly
designated him one of McGill's"Popular Profs," and he frequently makes McGill's
list of top newsmakers at the University (a list of the 10 professors who attracted
attention from the greatest number of different media.), in 2004 Troy was number 7.
Personal Anecdote:
One of the first real history books I ever bought was"Why the North
Won the Civil War," edited by David Donald. I was 9, and, didn't open
the book for years. Still, Professor Donald was probably the first
historian I ever heard of, so studying with him in graduate school was like
learning hitting from another boyhood hero (and I risk emerging as a
not-so-young historian), Mickey Mantle.
That sense of excitement, of fulfilling boyhood dreams, remains. I
feel lucky, and still a bit shocked that books and articles I write get
published or that students listen to my lectures, just as I learned from
great professors, who included, in addition to Professor Donald,
Bernard Bailyn and Alan Brinkley. I remember that first time I TAed. As
students transcribed my words, I felt like saying,"I hope this is right....
I only sound authoritative."
I loved graduate school. There, as in college, I was quiet and non-controversial. (I tell this to students, reassuring them that it can take a while to find your voice, but there's always time to compensate, or, as some would say about me, over-compensate.) Despite being a"good boy," I did almost blow up half of Pittsburgh once. Researching my dissertation on presidential campaigning, I had to tour the losers' archives. A grand trip took me through the American heartland from Albany (Al Smith) to Chicago (Stephen A. Douglas) back east - in my cousin's"hand me down," 13-year-old 1974 white Camaro with a V-8 engine, elaborate hubcaps, and red leather interior. My friends, bemused by their penurious, unfashionable friend driving a sports-car, called me"Spike." Driving east from Dayton (James Cox), I stopped in Pittsburgh. While pumping gas into the back of this pre-oil crisis gaz guzzler, I opened the trunk, and began pouring the usual quart or two of oil into the front. Some oil spilled on the overheated engine and ignited. Envisioning the car catching fire - and blowing up the entire neighborhood - I did what any graduate student would do - I plunged into the car and removed my notes.... After that, I extinguished the fire by throwing water on it, only to be yelled at by the mechanic for throwing water into the oil tank, which he then charged me too much money to drain, it being a Sunday.
I often say,"I love my job but I hate my profession." We historians, collectively, have not had honest, self-critical, absolutely necessary discussions about the lack of support so many of us feel, the impersonality of too many conferences, the aridity of presenters droning on with often incomprehensible and pedantic texts, the excessively political job market, the demoralizing dynamic of graduating with a PhD, then begging for work, the too many historians who only speak to those who agree with them politically AND methodologically - among other problems. Still, I feel blessed to wake up every day and be my own boss, follow my own muse, and either have to write, research, or teach.
Teaching Position: Associate Professor of History, Brandeis University;
(Chair of the Brandeis Graduate Program in American History, July 2003-June 2005)
Area of Research: American social and legal history, urban history, and the
Progressive Era (1890-1920).
Education: Ph.D, University of Chicago, 1997
Major Publications:City of Courts: Socializing Justice in Progressive Era
Chicago (Cambridge University Press, 2003);
Untitled on smallpox, public health, and the politics of vaccination in the Progressive
Era, work-in-progress, to be published by Penguin Press, New York (The Penguin History
of American Life series).
Additional Info:
Willrich was a journalist in Washington D.C. from 1987-1991 where he wrote articles
on politics and urban affairs that appeared in The Washington Monthly,
Washington City Paper, The New Republic, Mother Jones,
The California Republic, and other magazines.
Awards: City of Courts won the American Historical Association's John H. Dunning
Prize for 2003; Residential Fellowship, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard, 2004-05.
Personal Anecdote: Forgive me for being sentimental, but my dissertation sources
stunk. Really. They made my eyes tear, my skin itch, and my nose explode. Working in the
old archives room of the Chicago Historical Society in the mid-1990s, I'd taken to
wearing a mask, the kind other folks wear when they're sanding chipped varnish off an
old bed frame or driving a five-pound sledge hammer through dry wall. Only I was poring
over the contents of an old scrapbook of newspaper clippings that a long-deceased local
judge, Chief Justice Harry Olson of the Municipal Court of Chicago, had kept in the
early twentieth century. The scrapbook had apparently spent much of the previous
seventy-five years in someone's basement or attic, where the damp and the vermin and
the mold spores had made a home in its brittle newsprint pages. I couldn't have been
a pretty sight myself. Archie Motley, the much-beloved dean of Chicago archivists
(who passed away in 2002), would chuckle sweetly as he padded by my table. When Archie
had first laid his hands on this scrapbook in 1994, I'd already been coming to the
society for years, most recently to research a dissertation centering on the criminal
courts of the Second City in the Progressive Era. Archie quietly slipped the disassembled
scrapbooks onto my desk one day. And weeks later, mask and all, I still couldn't
believe my dumb luck.
I'd learned to shut up and just be thankful for everything that wind-ripped Midwestern metropolis had unceremoniously laid before me since I first arrived at the University of Chicago, in search of an education, in the fall of 1991. After a few years working as a journalist in the nation's capital, I'd come to Chicago to study urban history. My best bet was that I'd stay maybe a year. But by the time the first subzero night spun permafrost like white cobwebs onto my apartment windows, and Max Weber's Economy and Society had found a permanent place on my desk, I guess I knew I'd settled in for the long haul. I'm not entirely sure what did it. It might have been Kathy Conzen's incredible first-year research seminar in social history, Bill Novak's classes and interdisciplinary workshop in legal history, Tom Holt's seminar on race, conversations about urban culture with George Chauncey, or the many nights swilling history with my grad school friends at Jimmy's Woodlawn Tap. Or it could have been all of those deep archival sources-including criminal court records, feeble-minded commitment proceedings, unpublished sociological dissertations, manuscript collections, and newspapers-some of them just turning up, like some gangster's body, in a county warehouse, just when I needed them most. But looking back there's no question that Chicago itself had a lot to do with my decision to become a historian and to do the kind of history I do. That city and its people and its institutions and its music and its history: they fed my head, my body, my senses. I tried once to get away-tried to contrive a dissertation that would carry me back home to California. But it was no use. Chicago had, at least for the time being, become my home, Sweet Home.