Marketing the Intellectual, Selling the Public [4]
The following is a guest post from Brad Baranowski, a PhD student at the University of Wisconsin Madison. He is currently working on a dissertation on the revival of political philosophy in the...
View ArticleWasserman’s Great Books Arcadia and Anti-Intellectualisms Old and New, Part 1...
In a piece for The American Conservative, titled “In Defense of Difficulty” (and appearing the March-April paper issue), Steve Wasserman argues that something of an Arcadia of middlebrow thought...
View ArticleThe Fun & Risk of Being Wrong [6]
For my dissertation research, I read my fair share of sociology monographs from the 1950s and 1960s. Although unsure of what to expect at the start, I had in my mind something approximating a...
View ArticleBeyond the Golden Age: Rethinking the History of the Anti-Vaccination...
[Note: This following was presented on April 18, 2015 at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians in St. Louis. As a note of appreciation to S-USIH for sponsoring my panel, I am...
View ArticleEvangelical Anti-Intellectualism: Reading Noll’s Scandal in 2015 [3]
I recently finished Mark Noll’s classic, The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Eerdmans, 1994), for the first time. It’s a shame it took me this long. Most every page—all but maybe the final...
View ArticleBeyond Scientific Ignorance: Seeking the Roots of Democratized Anti-Knowledge...
A new article on Stanford’s prominent historian of science, Robert N. Proctor, made the rounds last week. The BBC’s Georgina Kenyon profiled him in a January 6 piece for his excellent work on...
View ArticleJames Livingston on Life and The Age of Reform by Richard Hofstadter [5]
Classics Series Review by James Livingston (Also cross-posted from Dr. Livingston’s blog here.) Richard Hofstadter. The Age of Reform; From Bryan to F.D.R. (New York: Vintage Books, 1955) In the last...
View ArticleThe Demos, Polis, and Meritocratic Technocracy: Anti-Elitism in Recent U.S....
Richard Hofstadter asserted, in his 1963 classic Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, that anti-intellectualism is about resentment and hostility toward “the life of the mind and of those who are...
View ArticleHofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism: Criticisms, a Critique, and Teaching...
Tonight I began a six-week session leading a Newberry Library seminar on Richard Hofstadter’s Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. I’m pleased to report that the course is full. Twenty-two people...
View ArticleDon’t Eat the Fruit!
Once upon a time, I was at a conference. Over beers with fellow attendees, the topic of conservatism came up. “I just don’t get it,” said one of our company. I asked what they meant. “I don’t get...
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