Beyond the Agency Debate by Jeremy C. Young In a four-part series here at the S-USIH Blog last year (I II III IV), Eran Zelnik laid out the contours of a central debate in American historiography.  Do ordinary people, he asked, possess agency – the ability to shape the contours of their society and to control their own fates?  Are we mere marionettes on the historical stage, dancing perpetually to the tunes of our handlers?  Or can we, like Pinocchio, periodically cut our strings and become co-authors of the historical pageant in which we find ourselves?  Eran himself argued against Read more