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Author to discuss historian’s liberal accounts Sept. 28 |
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Krista M. Hayes |
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Sep 25, 2006 |
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Dr. David Brown, associate professor of history at Elizabethtown College, will give a talk, “Richard Hofstadter: The Rise and Fall of 20th Century Liberal Historiography,” on Thursday, Sept. 28, at 7:30 p.m. in Driscoll Alumni Center Room 1019.
Brown will discuss the contributions of the historian to both American intellectual and political life in the postwar period. His presentation is part of the Department of History’s Engaged History Lecture Series.
“Hofstadter championed a fresh approach to writing history that converged with the emerging liberalism of the day to establish new ways to look at the past,” Brown said. “He also developed original concepts including ‘status anxiety’ and ‘paranoid style’ to label the opponents of liberalism ideological extremists. The presentation will view Hofstadter’s life and work within the context of liberalism rise and fall.”
According to Brown, Hofstadter was one of the most distinguished American historians of the 20th century. “I argue that although historians write objectively, they, like anyone else, are influenced by their environment and that Hofstadter’s environment — the son of a Jewish immigrant, marriage to a political radical, educated during the leftist ’30s — influenced Hofstadter’s later histories,” Brown said. “He was a leftist who, with age, became a liberal and defended liberalism fiercely in his work.”
Books that Brown has written are Richard Hofstadter: An Intellectual Biography (2006) and Thomas Jefferson: A Biographical Companion (1998). His articles for professional journals include “Déjà Vu All Over Again: Re-Reading Richard Hofstadter by the Light of the New New Right” (2006) and “Redefining American History: Ethnicity, Progressive Historiography, and the Making of Richard Hofstadter” (2003).
“Many of the issues that concerned Hofstadter in the 1950s and 1960s, such as McCarthyism and the Goldwater movement, are very much with us today,” Brown said. “Liberals still have an enemy on the ideological frontier, neo-conservatism. By understanding Hofstadter’s ideological pilgrimage and the issues that shaped his views on the past, we might better understand why liberalism had such a short life and why it was overtaken by a new, new right.”
Prior to teaching at Elizabethtown College, Brown taught history at The University of Toledo, Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor, Mich., and Saginaw Valley State University in Saginaw, Mich.
In 1990, Brown received a bachelor of arts degree in history from Wright State University. He earned master’s and doctoral degrees from the University of Akron in 1992 and The University of Toledo in 1995, respectively.
Following the lecture, attendees will have the opportunity to ask questions.
For more information on the free, public lecture, contact Dr. Alfred Cave, UT professor and interim chair of history, at 419.530.4001 or alfred.cave@utoledo.edu.
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