Introduction

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
The Past ◽  
The People ◽  
American Intellectual ◽  
American Intellectual History ◽  
Intellectual Production ◽  
American Thought

‘Introduction’ examines the scope and aims of American intellectual history. It shows how it is an approach to understanding the American past by way of ideas and the people who made or were moved by them. Intellectual history seeks to understand where certain persistent concerns in American thought have come from and why some ideas, which were important in the past, have faded from view. Intellectual history also concerns itself with the myriad institutions that are sites of intellectual production and dissemination. Ultimately, intellectual history invites thinking about thinking, both in the past and today. It seeks to demonstrate that thinking is where so much of the historical action is.

American Intellectual History: A Very Short Introduction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Revolutionary War ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Westward Expansion ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Intellectual ◽  
American Intellectual History ◽  
American Thought

American Intellectual History: A Very Short Introduction provides an introduction to the history of American thought from the sixteenth century up until the present. Long before the United States was a nation, it was a set of ideas, projected onto the New World by European commentators and explorers. American thought grew from this foundation of expectation and experience, both enriched and challenged over the centuries by developments including the Revolutionary War, westward expansion, the rise of capitalism, the proliferation of diverse religions, immigration, industrialization, and the emergence of the United States as a superpower. This introduction provides an overview of some of the most compelling episodes and abiding preoccupations in American thought, while showing how ideas have been major forces driving the course of American history.

FORUM: THE PRESENT AND FUTURE OF AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY INTRODUCTION

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 149-156 ◽  
Author(s):  
THOMAS BENDER
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Current Practice ◽  
Half Century ◽  
The Past ◽  
Past Half Century ◽  
Fair Representation ◽  
American Intellectual ◽  
American Intellectual History ◽  
Past Half

The following essays present six distinct but broadly compatible narratives of scholarship in United States intellectual history over the past half-century: postwar dominance, a season of despair, and then the field's rise, transformation, and expansion. The essays are a feast of erudition; any reader will come away from them with a list of “must-read” books. But there is much more here. These are rigorous and sophisticated explorations—at once historical and prescriptive—of a flourishing field. The writers span different generations, with authors representative of older, middling, and younger scholars. These appraisals are various yet they are unambiguously within the mainstream, tracking the current understandings of the somewhat fuzzy boundaries of the field. While additional writers might have further enriched the coverage, these writers together offer a fair representation of current practice in the field.

The American Mind Is Dead, Long Live the American Mind

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Kittelstrom
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Seventeenth Century ◽  
New England ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
American Studies ◽  
American Mind ◽  
The Past ◽  
American Intellectual ◽  
The Times ◽  
American Intellectual History

The story of American intellectual history has a mythic quality: a slow beginning, a rise to great heights, and a precipitous fall. Early in the twentieth century, the study of American history and literature grew in American colleges and universities, after many years of teaching European ideas in lieu of an American canon. Then, from a literature department arose Vernon Louis Parrington and from an American studies department Perry Miller—their writing compelling, learned, and suggestive. Their books and their students established the new field of American intellectual history, drawing readers far and wide into their interpretations of how not just individuals but entire peoples had “minds” that hovered above society, transmitting ideas from the past and changing with the times. Miller pioneered this approach with The New England Mind: The Seventeenth Century, which became required reading for historians for decades—and ever since, for Puritan specialists. Miller used the published sermons of the most prominent theologians—and their European sources—to describe a crisis in Puritan thought over the character of their faith and therefore purpose. The concept of the regional or national mind became so popular that when Parrington's student Henry Steele Commager published The American Mind at mid-century, the book met a hungry public and went into eight printings in seven years.

New Directions in American Intellectual History

1980 ◽  
Vol 85 (2) ◽  
pp. 449
Author(s):  
Gene Wise ◽  
John Higham ◽  
Paul K. Conkin
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
New Directions ◽  
American Intellectual ◽  
American Intellectual History

WHAT IS OUR “CANON”? HOW AMERICAN INTELLECTUAL HISTORIANS DEBATE THE CORE OF THEIR FIELD

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 185-200 ◽  
Author(s):  
DAVID A. HOLLINGER
Keyword(s):  
Intellectual History ◽  
Center Of Gravity ◽  
Intellectual Tradition ◽  
Important Indicator ◽  
Quarter Century ◽  
Specific Research ◽  
The Core ◽  
Research Questions ◽  
American Intellectual ◽  
American Intellectual History

These selected excerpts from a conversation now running nearly a quarter-century about The American Intellectual Tradition: A Sourcebook exemplify the efforts made by specialists in American intellectual history to decide just what constitutes the core of their field. An anthology designed for undergraduates has practical limitations, to be sure, that prevent its table of contents from ever serving as a complete map of a field. Specific research questions, not arguments over canons, properly remain the deepest center of gravity of any cohort of scholars. But assignments to students are one important indicator of what scholar–teachers take to be important, and these assignments are not unrelated to choices these same individuals make about the topics of their monographic contributions. Hence the lively correspondence that my coeditor, Charles Capper, and I have carried on with dozens of colleagues concerning the six editions of the only collection of sources for this field currently in print offers a window on how American intellectual history has changed in the last generation and what are its current directions.

Willie Jones

2019 ◽  
pp. 217-234
Author(s):  
Kyle Scott
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
Individual Liberty ◽  
Political Status ◽  
The North ◽  
Widespread Belief ◽  
American Intellectual ◽  
American Intellectual History

This chapter examines the political thought of Anti-Federalist leader Willie Jones and attempts to situate him in the broader context of American intellectual history. A Virginia native from a prominent family, Jones established a plantation in Halifax County, which he represented in a series of colonial and state assemblies. After the colonies declared independence, Jones took charge of the radical faction in the North Carolina legislature. At the Hillsborough convention of 1788, Jones saw no need for North Carolina to ratify the Constitution immediately. He believed emotional and cultural ties united the thirteen states whatever their political status. North Carolina could join the Union whenever it wished. In the meantime, it could demand amendments to protect individual and states’ rights. Jones’s position reflected the long standing and widespread belief that small republics best protected individual liberty.

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