Merle Curti: Difference between revisions

From Citizendium
Jump to navigation Jump to search
imported>Richard Jensen
(add)
mNo edit summary
 
(27 intermediate revisions by 10 users not shown)
Line 1: Line 1:
'''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 [[Quantitative History]] as a tool in historical research.
{{subpages}}{{TOC|right}}
'''Merle Curti''' (1897-1997) was a leading American historian. He taught a large number of Ph.D. students at the [[University of Wisconsin]] and was a leader in social and intellectual history.  As a "Progressive" historian he was deeply committed to democracy and to the [[Frederick Jackson Turner|Turnerian]] thesis that social and economic forces shape American life, thought, and character.  He was a pioneer in peace studies, intellectual history, and social history, and helped develop [[Quantitative History|quantitative history]] as a tool in historical research.


==Life==
==Early Life, Education, and Teaching==
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 was born in  Papillion, Nebraska, which is a village near [[Omaha]]. His father was a physician who had immigrated from Switzerland and his mother was a [[Yankee]] from Vermont. He attended high school in Omaha, obtained a bachelor's degree in 1920 at Harvard College (where he was enrolled in an officer's training program), followed by a year of study in France.  There he met and married Margaret Wooster, 1898-1963, a Ph.D. from the [[University of Chicago]] who was a pioneer in research on child psychology.<ref>See [http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/sophiasmith/mnsss9.html Margaret Wooster Curti Papers, 1898-1963].</ref>


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.  
He took his Ph.D. in 1927 from [[Harvard College|Harvard]], where he was one of the last students of [[Frederick Jackson Turner]].  Curti started writing on American cultural nationalism in the nineteenth century.  It was never published but its theme reemerged in several books.  His 1927 Ph.D. dissertation, nominally directed by [[Arthur Schlesinger, Sr.]]  comprised essays on the history of the American peace movement.  Curti taught at [[Smith College]] (1925-31), where he introduced the first course on the history of American thought.  He taught at [[Teachers College, Columbia University]] (1931-1942), where he was influenced by [[John Dewey]] and in turn influenced numerous promising graduate students, including [[Richard Hofstadter]].  He taught in Japan, Australia, and India for two years.  About this time he left the [[Episcopalianism|Episcopal]] faith of his boyhood for [[Unitarianism]].  Although never a [[Marxism|Marxist]], he voted for Socialist presidential candidates in the name of world peace.


==Academic career==
==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 ambitious early version of ''The Growth of American Thought.''
In the pacifistic 1930s Curti 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|peace studies]] as a field of study.  He criticized [[Pacifism|pacifists]] for ignoring major social changes&mdash;especially the  repudiation of old-fashioned competitive capitalism by the [[New Deal]] and the need to repudiate imperial greed if peace were to be achieved. In 1964, he helped found the [[Conference on Peace Research in History]], now called the [[Peace History Society]]''The Roots of American Loyalty'' (1946) was a history of patriotism. 


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.  ''The Roots of American Loyalty'' (1946) was a history of patriotism.  Curti was called to the Frederick Jackson Turner professorship at the University of Wisconsin, one of the nation's three or four most influential centers of historical scholarship, where he remained until his retirement in 1968.  Over the years, Curti supervised over 80 doctoral dissertations, allowing his students a free hand in content and methodology.
In 1942, Curti was called to the Frederick Jackson Turner professorship at the [[University of Wisconsin]], one of the nation's three or four most influential centers of historical scholarship, where he remained until his retirement in 1968.  The department was notorious for the angry feuds among the senior professors, which Curti, mild-mannered and small of stature, completely ignored.  Curti supervised 86 finished doctoral dissertations.  They include among many famous scholars [[Richard Hofstadter]] on [[Social Darwinism]], [[John Higham]] on [[ethnicity]], [[Paul Bourke]] on community studies, [[Allen Davis]] on [[Progressivism]] and [[Jane Addams]], and Roderick Nash on the environment.  Curti allowed his students a free hand in content and methodology. He encouraged his students constantly, wrote highly detailed critiques of their chapters, protected them from intra-departmental feuds, helped them get funding, and found them jobs through the "old boys" network of which he was an accomplished maestro. (Curti wrote hundreds of letters a month to friends and ex-students across the globe.)


He continued to write after retirement, keeping up-to-date an influential textbook, ''Rise of the American Nation'' for the schools coauthored with Lewis Todd.
He continued to write after retirement, keeping up-to-date an influential textbook, ''Rise of the American Nation'' for schools which he coauthored with [[Lewis Todd]].


==Intellectual history==
==Intellectual history==
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.   
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.  In 1944, Curti won the [[Pulitzer Prize]] in history for his masterwork, ''The Growth of American Thought.'' Its chapters show an encyclopedia knowledge of thinkers great and small from the colonial period to the present, together with his commitment to democracy as a process springing from the ideas of the people. Curti adapted Turner's [[frontier thesis]] to intellectual history, arguing "Because the American environment, physical and social, differed from that of Europe, Americans, confronted by different needs and problems, adapted the European intellectual heritage in their own way. And because American life came increasingly to differ from European life, American ideas, American agencies of intellectual life, and the use made of knowledge likewise came to differ in America from their European counterparts" (p. vi).  Unlike some of the other leaders of the American Studies program, he paid little attention to myths and symbols.  Unlike [[Perry Miller]], who strongly influenced a new generation of intellectual historians at [[Harvard College|Harvard]], Curti never delved too deeply into the internal history of ideas, preferring to link them to multiple external social and economic factors. His book was not so much a history of American thought as a social history of American thought, with strong attention to the social and economic forces that shaped that thought from the bottom up.
In 1944, Curti won the Pulitzer Prize in history for his masterwork, ''The Growth of American Thought.'' Its chapters show an encyclopedia knowledge of thinkers great and small from the colonial period to the present, together with his commitment to democracy as a process springing from the ideas of the people. Curti adapted [[Frontier Thesis|Turner's frontier thesis]] to intellectual history, arguing, "Because the American environment, physical and social, differed from that of Europe, Americans, confronted by different needs and problems, adapted the European intellectual heritage in their own way. And because American life came increasingly to differ from European life, American ideas, American agencies of intellectual life, and the use made of knowledge likewise came to differ in America from their European counterparts." (p vi) His book was not so much a history of American thought as a social history of American thought, with strong attention to the social and economic forces that shaped that thought.  
 
<!--This needs to be moved-->
Contents:
Contents:
#. A Variety of Peoples Bequeath Legacies to the New Nation   
# A Variety of Peoples Bequeath Legacies to the New Nation   
#. Colonial Conditions Modify the Old World Heritage   
# Colonial Conditions Modify the Old World Heritage   
#. The Christian Heritage   
# The Christian Heritage   
#. The Transmission of Polite Learning and of Scientific Interests   
# The Transmission of Polite Learning and of Scientific Interests   
#. The Rise of the Enlightenment   
# The Rise of the Enlightenment   
#. The Revolutionary Shift in Emphasis   
# The Revolutionary Shift in Emphasis   
#. The Expanding Enlightenment   
# The Expanding Enlightenment   
#. The Conservative Reaction   
# The Conservative Reaction   
#. Patrician Direction of Thought   
# Patrician Direction of Thought   
#. Nationalism Challenges Cosmopolitanism and Regionalism   
# Nationalism Challenges Cosmopolitanism and Regionalism   
#. The West Challenges Patrician Leadership   
# The West Challenges Patrician Leadership   
#. New Currents of Equalitarian Thought and Practice   
# New Currents of Equalitarian Thought and Practice   
#. The Advance of Science and Technology   
# The Advance of Science and Technology   
#. The Popularization of Knowledge   
# The Popularization of Knowledge   
#. New Goals for Democracy   
# New Goals for Democracy   
#. The Rising Tide of Patriotism and Nationalism   
# The Rising Tide of Patriotism and Nationalism   
#. Cultural Regionalism in the Old South   
# Cultural Regionalism in the Old South   
#. The Thrust of the Civil War into Intellectual Life   
# The Thrust of the Civil War into Intellectual Life   
#. The Nature of the New Nationalism   
# The Nature of the New Nationalism   
#. Business and the Life of the Mind   
# Business and the Life of the Mind   
#. The Delimitation of Supernaturalism   
# The Delimitation of Supernaturalism   
#. Evolutionary Thought in a Utilitarian Society   
# Evolutionary Thought in a Utilitarian Society   
#. Professionalization and Popularization of Learning   
# Professionalization and Popularization of Learning   
#. Formulas of Protest and Reform   
# Formulas of Protest and Reform   
#. The Conservative Defense   
# The Conservative Defense   
#. America Recrosses the Oceans   
# America Recrosses the Oceans   
#. Prosperity, Disillusionment, Criticism   
# Prosperity, Disillusionment, Criticism   
#. Crisis and New Searches   
# Crisis and New Searches   
#. American Assertions in a World of Upheaval   
# American Assertions in a World of Upheaval   




==New Social History==
==New Social History==
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."  The "old" social history comprised descriptions of everyday lifestyles, perhaps with a coverage of grass roots political movements (like the Populists), His "new" social history was a systematic examination of the entire population using statistics and social science methodologies.
In 1959, Curti published a collaborative social history of rural [[Trempealeau County]], [[Wisconsin (U.S. state)|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," immediately became a pioneer work in the "new social history." Curti's wife Margaret Wooster Curti, provided some of the quantitative methodology. Historians, however, did not emulate it, preferring instead to follow [[Stephan Thernstrom]]'s model in ''Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth-Century American City'' (1964), which used a similar methodology of tracking workers through their careers using census records and city directories. The difference was urban and rural--urban history was robust and expanding rapidly and rural history was seen as a backwater; in addition the Thernstrom model was easier to replicate by a graduate student writing a PhD thesis alone (Curti had numerous research assistants and coauthors). The "old" social history comprised descriptions of everyday lifestyles, perhaps with a coverage of grass roots political movements (like the Populists), while Curti's "new social history" was a systematic examination of the entire population using statistics and social science methodologies.


==Memberships, awards and honors==
==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.
<!--This should also be moved, maybe to a catalog-->
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.
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.
Line 58: Line 61:
Curti was an elected member of the prestigious [[American Academy of Arts and Sciences]] and the [[American Philosophical Society]].
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.  
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==
The Merle Curti Papers are open for research at the [[State Historical Society of Wisconsin]].  
* ''The American Peace Crusade, 1815-1860'' (1929)
* "Non-Resistance in New England," ''The New England Quarterly'' Vol. 2, No. 1 (Jan., 1929), pp. 34-57 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0028-4866%28192901%292%3A1%3C34%3ANINE%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R in JSTOR]
*''Bryan and World Peace.'' Northampton, Mass.: Smith College Studies in History, (1931).
* "Robert Rantoul, Jr., The Reformer in Politics," ''The New England Quarterly'' Vol. 5, No. 2 (Apr., 1932), pp. 264-280 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0028-4866%28193204%295%3A2%3C264%3ARRJTRI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-J in JSTOR]
* ''The Social ideas of American Educators with New Chapter on the last twenty-five years'' (1932, 1959) 
*''Peace or War: The American Struggle.'' (1936). [http://www.amazon.com/Peace-War-American-Struggle-1636-1936/dp/1406744077/ref=sr_1_10?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1195897616&sr=8-10 excerpt and text search]
* "The Great Mr. Locke: America's Philospher, 1783-1861," ''The Huntington Library Bulletin'' No. 11 (Apr., 1937), pp. 107-151 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=1935-0708%28193704%290%3A11%3C107%3ATGMLAP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-D in JSTOR]
*  "Public Opinion and the Study of History," ''The Public Opinion Quarterly'' Vol. 1, No. 2 (Apr., 1937), pp. 84-87 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0033-362X%28193704%291%3A2%3C84%3APOATSO%3E2.0.CO%3B2-8 in JSTOR]
* "Francis Lieber and Nationalism," ''The Huntington Library Quarterly'' Vol. 4, No. 3 (Apr., 1941), pp. 263-292 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0018-7895%28194104%294%3A3%3C263%3AFLAN%3E2.0.CO%3B2-8 in JSTOR]
*''The Growth of American Thought.'' (1943, 1951), 912pp. [http://www.questia.com/library/book/the-growth-of-american-thought-by-merle-curti.jsp online edition]
* ''The University of Wisconsin A History 1848-1925'' (2 vol 1949) with Vernon Carstenson
* ''The Roots of American Loyalty'' (1946) [http://www.questia.com/library/book/the-roots-of-american-loyalty-by-merle-curti.jsp online edition]
* "The Reputation of America Overseas (1776-1860)," ''American Quarterly'' Vol. 1, No. 1 (Spring, 1949), pp. 58-82 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0678%28194921%291%3A1%3C58%3ATROAO%28%3E2.0.CO%3B2-%23 in JSTOR]
* "America at the World Fairs, 1851-1893," ''The American Historical Review'' Vol. 55, No. 4 (Jul., 1950), pp. 833-856 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762%28195007%2955%3A4%3C833%3AAATWF1%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O in JSTOR]
* "The Immigrant and the American Image in Europe, 1860-1914," with Kendall Birr; ''The Mississippi Valley Historical Review'' Vol. 37, No. 2 (Sep., 1950), pp. 203-230 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0161-391X%28195009%2937%3A2%3C203%3ATIATAI%3E2.0.CO%3B2-6 in JSTOR]
* "The Democratic Theme in American Historical Literature," ''The Mississippi Valley Historical Review'' Vol. 39, No. 1 (Jun., 1952), pp. 3-28, presidential address; [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0161-391X%28195206%2939%3A1%3C3%3ATDTIAH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-5 in JSTOR]
* "'The Flowery Flag Devils': The American Image in China 1840-1900." with John Stalker; ''Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society'' Vol. 96, No. 6 (Dec., 1952), pp. 663-690 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-049X%2819521220%2996%3A6%3C663%3A%22FFDTA%3E2.0.CO%3B2-I in JSTOR]
* "Human Nature in American Thought," ''Political Science Quarterly'' Vol. 68, No. 3 (Sep., 1953), pp. 354-375 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0032-3195%28195309%2968%3A3%3C354%3AHNIAT%3E2.0.CO%3B2-P in JSTOR]
* "Human Nature in American Thought: Retreat from Reason in the Age of Science," ''Political Science Quarterly'' Vol. 68, No. 4 (Dec., 1953), pp. 492-510 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0032-3195%28195312%2968%3A4%3C492%3AHNIATR%3E2.0.CO%3B2-T in JSTOR]
* "Intellectuals and Other People," ''The American Historical Review'' Vol. 60, No. 2 (Jan., 1955), pp. 259-282, presidential address [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0002-8762%28195501%2960%3A2%3C259%3AIAOP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-O in JSTOR]
* "Woodrow Wilson's Concept of Human Nature," ''Midwest Journal of Political Science'' Vol. 1, No. 1 (May, 1957), pp. 1-19 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0026-3397%28195705%291%3A1%3C1%3AWWCOHN%3E2.0.CO%3B2-7 in JSTOR]
* "American Philanthropy and the National Character," ''American Quarterly'' Vol. 10, No. 4 (Winter, 1958), pp. 420-437 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-0678%28195824%2910%3A4%3C420%3AAPATNC%3E2.0.CO%3B2-Q  in JSTOR]
*''The Making of an American Community: A Case Study of Democracy in a Frontier County.'' (1959).
* "Tradition and Innovation in American Philanthropy," ''Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society'' Vol. 105, No. 2 (Apr., 1961), pp. 146-156 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0003-049X%2819610421%29105%3A2%3C146%3ATAIIAP%3E2.0.CO%3B2-U in JSTOR]
* "Jane Addams on Human Nature," ''Journal of the History of Ideas'' Vol. 22, No. 2 (Apr., 1961), pp. 240-253 [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0022-5037%28196104%2F06%2922%3A2%3C240%3AJAOHN%3E2.0.CO%3B2-G  in JSTOR]
* "The Changing Concept of "Human Nature" in the Literature of American Advertising," ''The Business History Review'' Vol. 41, No. 4 (Winter, 1967), pp. 335-357, illustrated; [http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0007-6805%28196724%2941%3A4%3C335%3ATCCO%22N%3E2.0.CO%3B2-R in JSTOR]
* ''Human Nature in American Thought: A History'' (1980)
*  ''American Philanthropy Abroad'' (1988) [http://books.google.com/books?id=ZDznnjvvq6oC&dq=inauthor:curti+inauthor:merle&num=30&as_brr=0 excerpt and text search]
* ''America's History'' textbook coauthored with Lewis Paul Todd; many editions


==References==
==Notes==
*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]
{{reflist}}[[Category:Suggestion Bot Tag]]
*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==
*[http://www.oah.org/activities/awards/curti/index.html Merle Curti Award, Organization of American Historians]
 
----
<references/>
----
[[Category:CZ Live|Curti, Merle]]
[[Category:History Workgroup|Curti, Merle]]

Latest revision as of 06:00, 18 September 2024

This article has a Citable Version.
Main Article
Discussion
Related Articles  [?]
Bibliography  [?]
External Links  [?]
Citable Version  [?]
 
This editable Main Article has an approved citable version (see its Citable Version subpage). While we have done conscientious work, we cannot guarantee that this Main Article, or its citable version, is wholly free of mistakes. By helping to improve this editable Main Article, you will help the process of generating a new, improved citable version.

Merle Curti (1897-1997) was a leading American historian. He taught a large number of Ph.D. students at the University of Wisconsin and was a leader in social and intellectual history. As a "Progressive" historian he was deeply committed to democracy and to the Turnerian thesis that social and economic forces shape American life, thought, and character. He was a pioneer in peace studies, intellectual history, and social history, and helped develop quantitative history as a tool in historical research.

Early Life, Education, and Teaching

Curti was born in Papillion, Nebraska, which is a village near Omaha. His father was a physician who had immigrated from Switzerland and his mother was a Yankee from Vermont. He attended high school in Omaha, obtained a bachelor's degree in 1920 at Harvard College (where he was enrolled in an officer's training program), followed by a year of study in France. There he met and married Margaret Wooster, 1898-1963, a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago who was a pioneer in research on child psychology.[1]

He took his Ph.D. in 1927 from Harvard, where he was one of the last students of Frederick Jackson Turner. Curti started writing on American cultural nationalism in the nineteenth century. It was never published but its theme reemerged in several books. His 1927 Ph.D. dissertation, nominally directed by Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. comprised essays on the history of the American peace movement. Curti taught at Smith College (1925-31), where he introduced the first course on the history of American thought. He taught at Teachers College, Columbia University (1931-1942), where he was influenced by John Dewey and in turn influenced numerous promising graduate students, including Richard Hofstadter. He taught in Japan, Australia, and India for two years. About this time he left the Episcopal faith of his boyhood for Unitarianism. Although never a Marxist, he voted for Socialist presidential candidates in the name of world peace.

Academic Career

In the pacifistic 1930s Curti 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. He criticized pacifists for ignoring major social changes—especially the repudiation of old-fashioned competitive capitalism by the New Deal and the need to repudiate imperial greed if peace were to be achieved. In 1964, he helped found the Conference on Peace Research in History, now called the Peace History Society. The Roots of American Loyalty (1946) was a history of patriotism.

In 1942, Curti was called to the Frederick Jackson Turner professorship at the University of Wisconsin, one of the nation's three or four most influential centers of historical scholarship, where he remained until his retirement in 1968. The department was notorious for the angry feuds among the senior professors, which Curti, mild-mannered and small of stature, completely ignored. Curti supervised 86 finished doctoral dissertations. They include among many famous scholars Richard Hofstadter on Social Darwinism, John Higham on ethnicity, Paul Bourke on community studies, Allen Davis on Progressivism and Jane Addams, and Roderick Nash on the environment. Curti allowed his students a free hand in content and methodology. He encouraged his students constantly, wrote highly detailed critiques of their chapters, protected them from intra-departmental feuds, helped them get funding, and found them jobs through the "old boys" network of which he was an accomplished maestro. (Curti wrote hundreds of letters a month to friends and ex-students across the globe.)

He continued to write after retirement, keeping up-to-date an influential textbook, Rise of the American Nation for schools which he coauthored with Lewis Todd.

Intellectual history

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. In 1944, Curti won the Pulitzer Prize in history for his masterwork, The Growth of American Thought. Its chapters show an encyclopedia knowledge of thinkers great and small from the colonial period to the present, together with his commitment to democracy as a process springing from the ideas of the people. Curti adapted Turner's frontier thesis to intellectual history, arguing "Because the American environment, physical and social, differed from that of Europe, Americans, confronted by different needs and problems, adapted the European intellectual heritage in their own way. And because American life came increasingly to differ from European life, American ideas, American agencies of intellectual life, and the use made of knowledge likewise came to differ in America from their European counterparts" (p. vi). Unlike some of the other leaders of the American Studies program, he paid little attention to myths and symbols. Unlike Perry Miller, who strongly influenced a new generation of intellectual historians at Harvard, Curti never delved too deeply into the internal history of ideas, preferring to link them to multiple external social and economic factors. His book was not so much a history of American thought as a social history of American thought, with strong attention to the social and economic forces that shaped that thought from the bottom up.

Contents:

  1. A Variety of Peoples Bequeath Legacies to the New Nation
  2. Colonial Conditions Modify the Old World Heritage
  3. The Christian Heritage
  4. The Transmission of Polite Learning and of Scientific Interests
  5. The Rise of the Enlightenment
  6. The Revolutionary Shift in Emphasis
  7. The Expanding Enlightenment
  8. The Conservative Reaction
  9. Patrician Direction of Thought
  10. Nationalism Challenges Cosmopolitanism and Regionalism
  11. The West Challenges Patrician Leadership
  12. New Currents of Equalitarian Thought and Practice
  13. The Advance of Science and Technology
  14. The Popularization of Knowledge
  15. New Goals for Democracy
  16. The Rising Tide of Patriotism and Nationalism
  17. Cultural Regionalism in the Old South
  18. The Thrust of the Civil War into Intellectual Life
  19. The Nature of the New Nationalism
  20. Business and the Life of the Mind
  21. The Delimitation of Supernaturalism
  22. Evolutionary Thought in a Utilitarian Society
  23. Professionalization and Popularization of Learning
  24. Formulas of Protest and Reform
  25. The Conservative Defense
  26. America Recrosses the Oceans
  27. Prosperity, Disillusionment, Criticism
  28. Crisis and New Searches
  29. American Assertions in a World of Upheaval


New Social History

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," immediately became a pioneer work in the "new social history." Curti's wife Margaret Wooster Curti, provided some of the quantitative methodology. Historians, however, did not emulate it, preferring instead to follow Stephan Thernstrom's model in Poverty and Progress: Social Mobility in a Nineteenth-Century American City (1964), which used a similar methodology of tracking workers through their careers using census records and city directories. The difference was urban and rural--urban history was robust and expanding rapidly and rural history was seen as a backwater; in addition the Thernstrom model was easier to replicate by a graduate student writing a PhD thesis alone (Curti had numerous research assistants and coauthors). The "old" social history comprised descriptions of everyday lifestyles, perhaps with a coverage of grass roots political movements (like the Populists), while Curti's "new social history" was a systematic examination of the entire population using statistics and social science methodologies.

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.

The Merle Curti Papers are open for research at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin.

Notes