Steven Mintz
Encyclopedia
Steven Mintz is an American historian
at Columbia University
and directs the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Teaching Center.
(1973) and his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University
(1979). At Oberlin, where he wrote his senior thesis on Jean Toomer, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated Senior Scholar in History. At Yale, he completed his dissertation, "Studies in the Victorian Family," under the direction of David Brion Davis
.
After serving as a visiting assistant professor of History at Oberlin College
(1978–1980), he joined the History Department at the University of Houston
(1981–2007), where he was the John and Rebecca Moores Professor of History and Director of the American Cultures Program, which offers comparative perspectives on the peoples and cultures of the Western Hemisphere.
In 1985-1986, he was a guest professor at University of Siegen
, and in 1989-1990, he was at Harvard's Center for European Studies and also taught in Harvard's Extension School. In 2006-2007, he was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University
. In addition, he taught summer courses at Pepperdine University
(1994) and summer institutes for the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (1995 to the present) at Yale, Columbia, the New York Public Library, and NYU on slavery, film history, and digital history. He was named director of Columbia University
's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Teaching Center and a member of the History Department in 2008.
A cultural historian trained in the methods of the new social history, he is the author and editor of 13 history books, focusing on such topics as families and children, antebellum reform, slavery and antislavery, ethnicity, and film. His first book, A Prison of Expectations: The Family in Victorian Culture (1983), examined the psychological dynamics within a series of prominent literary families in Britain and the United States against a backdrop of broader cultural concerns about authority, discipline, and legitimacy. This volume, an early attempt to apply the concept of Victorianism to the study of mid-nineteenth-century American culture, also sought to explore the links between familial experience and literary expression and reveal how family conflicts embodied religious and cultural tensions.
His next book, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (1988), co-authored with Susan Kellogg, was the first comprehensive history of the American family since 1917. Underscoring ethnic, class, and temporal diversity in family life, this volume identified a series of disjunctive shifts in family structure and composition, roles and functions, and emotional and power dynamics over the past three-and-a-half centuries.
His history of antebellum reform, Moralists and Modernizers: America's Pre-Civil War Reformers (1995), portrayed reform as a vehicle for cultural and institutional modernization, the definition of middle-class values and identity, and the moral legitimization of new ideas about labor, poverty, deviance, and disorder. The Boisterous Sea of Liberty: A Documentary History of America from Colonization to the Civil War (1998), co-authored with David Brion Davis, used primary source documents from the Gilder Lehrman Collection to examine the role of race in early American history, politics, and culture; to trace the evolution of new conceptions of rights, including the notion of inalienable rights rooted in the laws of nature, minority rights, and the right to revolution; and the meanings, institutionalizations, and uses of power, including the invention of the people as a source of sovereign power, the growing power of public opinion, and the power of moral ideals.
He also wrote the chapters covering the periods 1790 to 1860 and 1960 to the present in America and Its Peoples (6th edition, 2006), a college textbook, and published a number of anthologies, including a collection of essays on film and history, volumes of annotated primary sources on slavery, Native American history, and Mexican American history, and a collection of original essays dealing with race, slavery and abolition, and reform, entitled The Problem of Evil: Slavery, Freedom, and the Ambiguities of American Reform (2007), co-edited with John Stauffer.
Huck’s Raft (2004), his history of children and youth in America from the colonial era to the present, examined childhood both as lived experience — shaped by such factors as class, ethnicity, gender, geographical region, and historical era — and as a cultural category imposed upon children. In addition to giving historical perspective to current psychological and legal thinking about childhood, the volume charted the evolution of public policy, tracing changes in ideas and practices involving adoption, child abuse
and neglect
, children’s rights, disability, juvenile delinquency, schooling, and social welfare policies.
A past president of H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, he is the creator of the Digital History website, which was named one of the Top Five U.S. history websites by Best of History Web Sites and included on the NEH’s EdSITEment list of exemplary online resources in the humanities. He has also served as a consultant to the National Museum of American History, the Minnesota Historical Center, the New-York Historical Society
, the New Jersey Historical Society, and the Strong National Museum of Play.
The president of the Society for the History of Children and Youth, he previously served as National Co-Chair of the Council on Contemporary Families (2004–2009), an organization of researchers and clinicians dedicated to enhancing the national conversation on the United States's diverse families. A board member of Film & History, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the Journal of Family Life, the Society for History Education, and Slavery & Abolition, he has also chaired the Organization of American Historians
Teaching Committee (2007–2008) and served on the American Historical Society's Nominating Committee (2006–2008).
Historian
A historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
at Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
and directs the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Teaching Center.
Life
Born in Detroit, Michigan, he received his B.A. from Oberlin CollegeOberlin College
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...
(1973) and his M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. degrees from Yale University
Yale University
Yale University is a private, Ivy League university located in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701 in the Colony of Connecticut, the university is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States...
(1979). At Oberlin, where he wrote his senior thesis on Jean Toomer, he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and graduated Senior Scholar in History. At Yale, he completed his dissertation, "Studies in the Victorian Family," under the direction of David Brion Davis
David Brion Davis
David Brion Davis is an American historian and authority on slavery and abolition in the Western world. He is the Sterling Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University and founder and Director Emeritus of Yale’s Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition. He is a...
.
After serving as a visiting assistant professor of History at Oberlin College
Oberlin College
Oberlin College is a private liberal arts college in Oberlin, Ohio, noteworthy for having been the first American institution of higher learning to regularly admit female and black students. Connected to the college is the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the oldest continuously operating...
(1978–1980), he joined the History Department at the University of Houston
University of Houston
The University of Houston is a state research university, and is the flagship institution of the University of Houston System. Founded in 1927, it is Texas's third-largest university with nearly 40,000 students. Its campus spans 667 acres in southeast Houston, and was known as University of...
(1981–2007), where he was the John and Rebecca Moores Professor of History and Director of the American Cultures Program, which offers comparative perspectives on the peoples and cultures of the Western Hemisphere.
In 1985-1986, he was a guest professor at University of Siegen
University of Siegen
The University of Siegen in Siegen, North Rhine-Westphalia, was founded in 1972. 14,100 students were enrolled at the university as of October 2010.-Faculties:University of Siegen offers in total 126 degree programmes across four faculties:...
, and in 1989-1990, he was at Harvard's Center for European Studies and also taught in Harvard's Extension School. In 2006-2007, he was a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University
Stanford University
The Leland Stanford Junior University, commonly referred to as Stanford University or Stanford, is a private research university on an campus located near Palo Alto, California. It is situated in the northwestern Santa Clara Valley on the San Francisco Peninsula, approximately northwest of San...
. In addition, he taught summer courses at Pepperdine University
Pepperdine University
Pepperdine University is an independent, private, medium-sized university affiliated with the Churches of Christ. The university's campus overlooking the Pacific Ocean in unincorporated Los Angeles County, California, United States, near Malibu, is the location for Seaver College, the School of...
(1994) and summer institutes for the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History (1995 to the present) at Yale, Columbia, the New York Public Library, and NYU on slavery, film history, and digital history. He was named director of Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Teaching Center and a member of the History Department in 2008.
A cultural historian trained in the methods of the new social history, he is the author and editor of 13 history books, focusing on such topics as families and children, antebellum reform, slavery and antislavery, ethnicity, and film. His first book, A Prison of Expectations: The Family in Victorian Culture (1983), examined the psychological dynamics within a series of prominent literary families in Britain and the United States against a backdrop of broader cultural concerns about authority, discipline, and legitimacy. This volume, an early attempt to apply the concept of Victorianism to the study of mid-nineteenth-century American culture, also sought to explore the links between familial experience and literary expression and reveal how family conflicts embodied religious and cultural tensions.
His next book, Domestic Revolutions: A Social History of American Family Life (1988), co-authored with Susan Kellogg, was the first comprehensive history of the American family since 1917. Underscoring ethnic, class, and temporal diversity in family life, this volume identified a series of disjunctive shifts in family structure and composition, roles and functions, and emotional and power dynamics over the past three-and-a-half centuries.
His history of antebellum reform, Moralists and Modernizers: America's Pre-Civil War Reformers (1995), portrayed reform as a vehicle for cultural and institutional modernization, the definition of middle-class values and identity, and the moral legitimization of new ideas about labor, poverty, deviance, and disorder. The Boisterous Sea of Liberty: A Documentary History of America from Colonization to the Civil War (1998), co-authored with David Brion Davis, used primary source documents from the Gilder Lehrman Collection to examine the role of race in early American history, politics, and culture; to trace the evolution of new conceptions of rights, including the notion of inalienable rights rooted in the laws of nature, minority rights, and the right to revolution; and the meanings, institutionalizations, and uses of power, including the invention of the people as a source of sovereign power, the growing power of public opinion, and the power of moral ideals.
He also wrote the chapters covering the periods 1790 to 1860 and 1960 to the present in America and Its Peoples (6th edition, 2006), a college textbook, and published a number of anthologies, including a collection of essays on film and history, volumes of annotated primary sources on slavery, Native American history, and Mexican American history, and a collection of original essays dealing with race, slavery and abolition, and reform, entitled The Problem of Evil: Slavery, Freedom, and the Ambiguities of American Reform (2007), co-edited with John Stauffer.
Huck’s Raft (2004), his history of children and youth in America from the colonial era to the present, examined childhood both as lived experience — shaped by such factors as class, ethnicity, gender, geographical region, and historical era — and as a cultural category imposed upon children. In addition to giving historical perspective to current psychological and legal thinking about childhood, the volume charted the evolution of public policy, tracing changes in ideas and practices involving adoption, child abuse
Child abuse
Child abuse is the physical, sexual, emotional mistreatment, or neglect of a child. In the United States, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Department of Children And Families define child maltreatment as any act or series of acts of commission or omission by a parent or...
and neglect
Neglect
Neglect is a passive form of abuse in which a perpetrator is responsible to provide care for a victim who is unable to care for himself or herself, but fails to provide adequate care....
, children’s rights, disability, juvenile delinquency, schooling, and social welfare policies.
A past president of H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online, he is the creator of the Digital History website, which was named one of the Top Five U.S. history websites by Best of History Web Sites and included on the NEH’s EdSITEment list of exemplary online resources in the humanities. He has also served as a consultant to the National Museum of American History, the Minnesota Historical Center, the New-York Historical Society
New-York Historical Society
The New-York Historical Society is an American history museum and library located in New York City at the corner of 77th Street and Central Park West in Manhattan. Founded in 1804 as New York's first museum, the New-York Historical Society presents exhibitions, public programs and research that...
, the New Jersey Historical Society, and the Strong National Museum of Play.
The president of the Society for the History of Children and Youth, he previously served as National Co-Chair of the Council on Contemporary Families (2004–2009), an organization of researchers and clinicians dedicated to enhancing the national conversation on the United States's diverse families. A board member of Film & History, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, the Journal of Family Life, the Society for History Education, and Slavery & Abolition, he has also chaired the Organization of American Historians
Organization of American Historians
The Organization of American Historians , formerly known as the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, is the largest professional society dedicated to the teaching and study of American history. OAH's members in the U.S...
Teaching Committee (2007–2008) and served on the American Historical Society's Nominating Committee (2006–2008).
Awards
- 2005 The Organization of American Historians Merle Curti AwardMerle Curti AwardThe Merle Curti Award is awarded annually by the Organization of American Historians for the best book in American social and/or American intellectual history. A committee of 5 members of the Organization of American Historians chooses the winners from published monographs submitted by the author...
- 2005 The Association of American Publishers R.R. Hawkins Award
- 2005 The Texas Institute of Letters Carr P. Collins Award