Merle Curti

Merle Curti (1897-1997) was a leading American historian. He taught a large number of PhD students at the University of Wisconsin, and was a leader in social social and intellectual history. He was a pioneer in peace studies, intellectual history and social history—and helped develop Quantittive History as a tool in historical research.

Life

Curti was born near Omaha, Nebraska in 1897. He was the son of a physician who had immigrated from Switzerland; his mother was a Yankee from Vermont. He obtained a bachelor's degree in 1920 and his Ph.D. in 1927—both from Harvard University, where he was one of the last students of Frederick Jackson Turner.

Curti taught at Beloit College, Smith College, Teachers College, Columbia University, and (from 1942 to 1968), at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He also taught in Japan, Australia, and India.

Academic career

While at Smith College, Curti published his first book, The American Peace Crusade, 1815-1860. The book, based on his dissertation, was written after Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. (who had replaced Turner at Harvard) rejected his first dissertation proposal which was an excessively ambibiitious early version of The Growth of American Thought.

Moving to Teachers College in 1931, he published a book on William Jennings Bryan and world peace (Bryan and World Peace). It was followed by Peace or War: The American Struggle in 1936. With these works, Curti helped found peace studies as a field of study.

Curti turned his attention to intellectual history, and helped to establish that field as a distinct academic discipline. His first foray in the field was The Social Ideals of American Educators, published in 1935. He was called to the Frederick Jackson Turner professorship at the University of Wisconsin, where he remained until his retirement in 1968. He continued to write after retirement, keeping up-to-date an influential textbook for the schools.

In 1944, Curti won the Pulitzer Prize in history for his masterwork, The Growth of American Thought.

In 1959, Curti published a collaborative social history of rural Trempealeau County, Wisconsin using quantitative analysis of census records. The book which came out of the project, "The Making of an American Community: A Case Study of Democracy in a Frontier County," and immediately became an important pioneer work in the "new social history."

Over the years, Curti supervised over 80 doctoral dissertations, allowing his students a free hand in content and methodology.

Memberships, awards and honors

He was president of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association (now the Organization of American Historians) in 1952 and the American Historical Association in 1954.

He was a co-founder of the American Studies Association. He served as the organization's vice-president in 1954 and 1955, and was asked to serve as president in 1956. But he declined the honor because he was going to be out of the country.

Curti was an elected member of the prestigious American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society.

In 1977, the Organization of American Historians established the Merle Curti Award. The prize is given annually for the best book in social, intellectual, and/or cultural history.

Publications

• Bryan and World Peace. Northampton, Mass.: Smith College Studies in History, 1931.
• Peace or War: The American Struggle. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1936.
• The Growth of American Thought. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1943.
• The Making of an American Community: A Case Study of Democracy in a Frontier County. Palo Alto, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1959.
• America's History textbook coauthored with Lewis Paul Todd; many editions

References

• Conkin, Paul K. "Merle Curti." In Clio's Favorites: Leading Historians of the United States, 1945-2000. ed. by Robert Allen Rutland, (2000). ISBN 0826213162 [ online edition]
• Davis, Allen F. "Memorial to Merle E. Curti." American Studies Association Newsletter. June 1996.
• Novick, Peter. That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession. (1988). ISBN 0521357454

External links

• Merle Curti Award, Organization of American Historians

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