Campus & Community

‘Politics, social movements’ focus of fellows

4 min read

James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History Joyce Chaplin, director of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, has announced the names of nine resident scholars participating in the center’s 2007-08 workshop, “Politics and Social Movements.” Leading the workshop are Lisa McGirr, professor of history, and Daniel Carpenter, professor of government.

“The theme of this year’s workshop is intended to bridge two important fields often studied separately: institutional politics and social movements,” McGirr said. “We have brought together a terrific group of scholars who work at the intersection of these two arenas. Fellows’ work ranges from the study of late 18th century associations to police and social movements in the 20th century, and from study of abolitionism to the Civil Rights Movement.”

Added Carpenter, “This year we have succeeded in creating an extremely vibrant community of intellectual exchange. The residential fellows have brought a great deal of intellectual energy to the workshop and we look forward to a lively year of engagement.” Workshop discussions will be further enlivened by the presence of a number of scholars in training; as with all recent Warren Center Workshops, this year’s program is linked with a graduate course on the same subject. This year’s course, a research seminar on social movements and politics in an interdisciplinary and international context, has attracted graduate students from the departments of Government and History, the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and the American Civilization Program.

Noted McGirr, “Students have already been in conversation with the Warren Center’s resident fellows whose work intersects with their own interests. This graduate course provides a unique opportunity for students to interact with the resident fellows, as well as affiliated Harvard faculty and local-area colleagues, as they develop their own projects.”

As they have since the center’s inception, Warren Fellows share their work with each other and scholars from Harvard and the Boston area, in the long-established workshop series that is the heart of the Warren Center’s intellectual community. Also making presentations in this year’s series will be invited guests, established scholars in a variety of fields, all working on projects related to the year’s theme. Michael Kazin, professor of history at Georgetown University, and Doug McAdam, professor of sociology at Stanford University, are two of the invited speakers thus far. The workshop meets from 4 to 5:30 p.m. on Tuesdays when there is no meeting of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, in Robinson Hall’s History Library (enter opposite Room 101). Papers are often precirculated for discussion; visit http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~cwc for additional information on the workshop schedule and other Warren Center programs.

The Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History was established in 1965 with a bequest from Annielouise Bliss Warren in honor of her husband, Charles Warren, an eminent lawyer and legal scholar. The gift was designed to further the study of American history at Harvard and to share the University’s rich historical resources with scholars from the United States and around the world.

 

 

 

The 2007-08 ‘Politics and Social Movements’ Warren Center Fellows:

 

 

 

Dorothy Sue Cobble, Labor Studies and Employment Relations Department, Rutgers University: “Labor Liberalism and the Quest for Human Rights and Social Justice.”

Françoise Hamlin, Department of History, Brown University: “‘The Story Isn’t Finished’: Continuing Histories of the Civil Rights Movement.”

Maartje Janse, Department of History, University of Leiden, the Netherlands: “Associational Mania: The Struggle for Recognition and the Transformation of Politics, 1820-1890.”

Albrecht Koschnik, independent scholar: “Civic Culture in the Making: Institution-Building in America, 1730-1850.”

Daniel Kryder, Department of Politics, Brandeis University: “Policing Movements: Authority and Democracy in Modern America.”

Lisa Materson, Department of History, University of California, Davis: “For the Freedom of Her Race: Black Women and Electoral Politics, 1877-1932” [spring semester].

Timothy McCarthy, Committee on Degrees in History and Literature, Harvard University: “Creating Equality: Black Protest, Abolitionism, and the Emergence of American Democracy” [fall semester].

Manisha Sinha, Departments of Afro-American Studies and History, University of Massachusetts: “Redefining Democracy: African Americans and the Movement to Abolish Slavery, 1775-1865.”

Susan Ware, independent scholar: “A Sporting Chance: Billie Jean King, Title IX, and Sports Feminism.”