John Dewey | Society for US Intellectual History

Announcement: #USIH2025 Keynote

We look forward to seeing you at our annual meeting, to be held in Detroit, 6–8 November 2025, where we will explore the theme of “Creativity & Renewal.” The deadline for submissions is 1 May 2025, and you will find the CFP at this link. We are thrilled to announce that our keynote speaker will be Dr. Casey Nelson Blake. Casey Nelson Blake is a Professor of History at Columbia University. Blake works on modern U.S. intellectual and cultural history, with an emphasis on the relationship between artistic modernism, cultural criticism, and democratic citizenship. His publications include Beloved Community: The Read more

Sara Georgini

December 7, 2020

Call for Submissions: John Dewey Prize

The Society for US Intellectual History (S-USIH) is pleased to announce this call for submissions for the 2021 John Dewey Prize. This triennial prize honors an excellent book of original Read more

Tim Lacy

December 28, 2017

The Critical, Conflicted, and Elitist Liberalism of Richard Hofstadter—And Why It Matters (Part 4)

The latter portions of Hofstadter’s assault on early and mid-twentieth-century educational tendencies also demonstrate, ironically, a run-of-the-mill reactionary liberalism. The general theme was that all Progressive Educators—from the earliest, most Read more

Tim Lacy

December 21, 2017

The Critical, Conflicted, and Elitist Liberalism of Richard Hofstadter—And Why It Matters (Part 3)

It is in Hofstadter’s writings on education, and on John Dewey, that one sees the former’s elitism and anti-radical (critical) liberalism. I have not mastered Hofstadter’s entire corpus of work Read more

Andrew Seal

December 5, 2016

Not a Prophet Nor a Prophet’s Son: Richard Rorty, Pragmatism, Sin, and Angels

There are many facts which seem to be routinely “lost”: we know them, but we forget that we know them until we are reminded of them. That Richard Rorty’s grandfather Read more

Andrew Seal

October 6, 2015

Re-Surveying the Via Media

Many of those who read this blog are likely familiar with James Kloppenberg’s magisterial Uncertain Victory: Social Democracy and Progressivism in European and America Thought, 1870-1920, from 1986. (If not, Read more

Andrew Hartman

November 8, 2013

“A Reevaluation of Postwar Liberal Consensus: Democracy, Race, and Education”

Our Irvine conference was by all accounts a rousing success. Allison Perlman deserves our gratitude for organizing it. The long trip from Denmark, and the jet lag that I am Read more