Johann N Neem
Biographic Data
| ID | 1059278 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Johann N Neem |
| GIVEN NAMES | Johann N |
| FAMILY NAME | Neem |
| SIGNATURE | NEEM J N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Western Washington University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-1651-1924 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 47 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 31 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2005 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Response to Geismer and Winant
Re-Enchanting American History
Around the world, citizens and leaders seek to realign collective identities with political boundaries. These aspirations are reshaping the ways we discuss—and divide over—US history. This article asks whether the history discipline is prepared to respond to the changes taking place around us, including the revival of nationalism. Professional historians use three dominant paradigms to narrate the history of the United States: post-American, hype…
History Teachers, Critical Thinking, and the Culture Wars
At a time when vitriolic partisan rhetoric dominates our headlines and headspace, the AHA's Nicholas Kryczka, Whitney E. Barringer, and Scot McFarlane, thankfully, seek to find out what teachers of history and social studies are really trying to accomplish in their classrooms.They argue that "culture warriors had imposed an analytical framework that obscured the real dynamics of curricular governance in the United States." Relying on polls and in…
Jon Shelton, The Education Myth
views it as weeding out those who were not fit to represent the brand.This book is not intended as a "take-down" of Morehouse or its graduates.Indeed, in providing her brilliant conceptual framework as to what is shaping the actions of the institution, Grundy identifies a path forward.The most hopeful part of her book focuses on the student body, their evolving approach to gender, and how they are clear-eyed about the failings of the administrati…
Policy Dialogue
Public education, at least as it has been known for the past several generations in the US, is under threat. Conservative state legislatures from Arizona to Florida have enacted sweeping voucher legislation, channeling taxpayer dollars to private schools. At the same time, a vicious culture war has engulfed the public education system in controversy, creating new political opportunities for ideologues and opponents. In this context, the editorial…
The Common School Awakening
Conceived in Crisis
Christopher R. Pearl has written an important work on the meaning and impact of the American Revolution. Focusing on Pennsylvania, Pearl argues that the Revolution was as much about domestic as imperial politics, but not in the ways we normally assume. Pearl opens Conceived in Crisis by asserting that, far from being antistatist, “the American Revolution led to the creation of powerful, extractive, coercive, and regulatory states” (p. 1). The goa…
R oger L. G eiger . American Higher Education since World War II
American Higher Education since World War II completes Roger L. Geiger’s history of the rise and fall of the American research university and academic values. In the first volume, History of American Higher Education: Learning and Culture from the Founding to World War II (2015), Geiger argued that there have been three consistent purposes for higher education: “knowledge, careers, and culture.” In that volume, Geiger explained why and how Americ…
Anti-intellectualism and education reform
It is a strange and sobering experience to read Hofstadter in our own anti-intellectual era. If anything, left-leaning intellectuals’ sense of alienation has increased since the 1990s. To challenge anti-intellectualism in American education, the liberal arts and sciences will need to be restored to their central place in the curriculum
Jefferson's Legal Commonplace Book
Jefferson's Legal Commonplace Book Jefferson's Legal Commonplace Book. Ed. by David Thomas Konig and Michael P. Zuckert. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019. xxiv, 665 pp. $150.00.) Johann N Neem Johann N Neem Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 107, Issue 3, December 2020, Pages 744–745, https://doi.org/10.1093/…
Social Capital, Civic Labor, and State Capacity in the Early American Republic
This article examines the local roots of the American state to complicate existing historiography. It suggests that, for education and law, the state tapped into local social capital to develop capacity. State and local governments relied on the mobilization of citizens’ bodies—civic labor—to provide public goods. In doing so, it suggests that we need to offer a story that captures the myriad ways that Americans engaged in state-building, and how…
Civic Longing
In the midst of the transnational turn in American letters and historiography, Carrie Hyde explores the nature of “civic longing,” in which real and imagined outsiders cultivated a desire to be part of the American nation. A work of literary criticism, Hyde argues that, prior to the 14th amendment, citizenship in the U.S. was defined through “culture” rather than law. “In the absence of a centralized legal definition of citizenship,” Hyde writes,…
From Polity to Exchange
Gordon Wood stoked a strong response from his fellow early American historians in 2015 when, in the pages of the Weekly Standard , he accused the Omohundro Institute of Early American History, publishers of the prestigious William and Mary Quarterly , of abandoning interest in the development of the United States. “A new generation of historians is no longer interested in how the United States came to be,” Wood argued. “That kind of narrative his…
Democracy's Schools
Commons Democracy
The discipline of history, argues James Turner, emerged to provide context necessary to understand texts, especially classical and Biblical ones. Over time, history became a discipline with its own content and practices.1 In Commons Democracy, Dana Nelson, a literary scholar, uses history in its philological manner, providing a new context to make sense of the novels of the early republic by rereading them in light of recent historiography. She o…
The History of American Higher Education
(2016). The History of American Higher Education: Learning and Culture from the Founding to World War II. The Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 87, No. 2, pp. 300-302
Path Dependence and the Emergence of Common Schools
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Mary Babson Fuhrer. A Crisis of Community
Mary Babson Fuhrer has written a thoughtful, humane book on how dramatic changes spurred by the American Revolution and the market revolution reshaped ordinary lives in Boylston, Massachusetts. Her narrative focuses on Mary White, a diligent diarist, and her family as they went through four tumultuous decades. Fuhrer argues that over those decades, “Mary and her neighbors asserted an unprecedented degree of personal autonomy and individual libert…
An Age of Infidels
Developing Freedom
Thomas Jefferson is often invoked as an advocate of limited government and a defender of individual rights. This article argues that rights were Jefferson's starting place. Jefferson also believed that American citizens should have opportunities to develop the capabilities necessary to enjoy the full use of their rights. Rather than thinking about Jefferson as progovernment or antigovernment, this article concludes that we must understand the par…
Taking Tradition Seriously
America's First Great Depression
The Reign of Terror in America
The Two Faces of American Freedom (review)
Reviewed by: The Two Faces of American Freedom Johann Neem The Two Faces of American Freedom By Aziz Rana . Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010. The American Revolution was a transformative event in world history, when the idea of self-rule was first articulated and put into practice. But, Aziz Rana reminds us, the idea of self rule was often compromised by older ideas of empire. While Americans struggled to make good their democratic promi…
Nancy Beadie, Education and the Creation of Capital in the Early American Republic
Path Dependence and the Emergence of Common Schools
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Historiographical Thinking
This article draws upon writings by social studies educators and historians to articulate a new approach to training history teachers. We argue that the divide between advocates of historical thinking and of historical content can be overcome through a better understanding of what it means to know history. By examining the nature of the historical discipline, we argue that historiographical knowledge, or learning through reading and criticizing s…
From Polity to Exchange
Gordon Wood stoked a strong response from his fellow early American historians in 2015 when, in the pages of the Weekly Standard , he accused the Omohundro Institute of Early American History, publishers of the prestigious William and Mary Quarterly , of abandoning interest in the development of the United States. “A new generation of historians is no longer interested in how the United States came to be,” Wood argued. “That kind of narrative his…
Developing Freedom
Thomas Jefferson is often invoked as an advocate of limited government and a defender of individual rights. This article argues that rights were Jefferson's starting place. Jefferson also believed that American citizens should have opportunities to develop the capabilities necessary to enjoy the full use of their rights. Rather than thinking about Jefferson as progovernment or antigovernment, this article concludes that we must understand the par…
Creating Social Capital in the Early American Republic
During the early years of the American republic, Connecticut's elite helped to develop a new form of social order, based on voluntary association, replacing the authoritarian, theological hierarchy of the old regime. Social relations, which were once thought fixed in nature by divine sanction, became amenable to the initiatives of the populace. By the antebellum era, Americans had also discovered that social capital could be created through the o…
The History of American Higher Education
(2016). The History of American Higher Education: Learning and Culture from the Founding to World War II. The Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 87, No. 2, pp. 300-302
America's First Great Depression
Taking Modernity's Wager
Alexis de Tocqueville watched with horror as American society and politics changed in the two decades following the publication of Democracy in America. During the 1840s and 1850s, the factors that Tocqueville had earlier identified as sustaining the republic-its land and location, its laws, and its mores-had begun to undermine it. Recent work on civil society, the public sphere, and social capital is congruent with a Tocquevillian analysis of th…
Squaring the Circle
When Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States, he was amazed by the new uses to which Americans put voluntary associations
Historiographical Thinking
This article draws upon writings by social studies educators and historians to articulate a new approach to training history teachers. We argue that the divide between advocates of historical thinking and of historical content can be overcome through a better understanding of what it means to know history. By examining the nature of the historical discipline, we argue that historiographical knowledge, or learning through reading and criticizing s…
Squaring the Circle
When Alexis de Tocqueville visited the United States, he was amazed by the new uses to which Americans put voluntary associations
In the Name of the Father
Creating Social Capital in the Early American Republic
During the early years of the American republic, Connecticut's elite helped to develop a new form of social order, based on voluntary association, replacing the authoritarian, theological hierarchy of the old regime. Social relations, which were once thought fixed in nature by divine sanction, became amenable to the initiatives of the populace. By the antebellum era, Americans had also discovered that social capital could be created through the o…
The Two Faces of American Freedom (review)
Reviewed by: The Two Faces of American Freedom Johann Neem The Two Faces of American Freedom By Aziz Rana . Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2010. The American Revolution was a transformative event in world history, when the idea of self-rule was first articulated and put into practice. But, Aziz Rana reminds us, the idea of self rule was often compromised by older ideas of empire. While Americans struggled to make good their democratic promi…
Nancy Beadie, Education and the Creation of Capital in the Early American Republic
American History in a Global Age1
Historians around the world have sought to move beyond national history. In doing so, they often conflate ethical and methodological arguments against national history. This essay, first, draws a clear line between the ethical and the methodological arguments concerning national history. It then offers a rationale for the continued writing of national history in general, and American history in particular, in today's global age.The essay makes tw…
Taking Modernity's Wager
Alexis de Tocqueville watched with horror as American society and politics changed in the two decades following the publication of Democracy in America. During the 1840s and 1850s, the factors that Tocqueville had earlier identified as sustaining the republic-its land and location, its laws, and its mores-had begun to undermine it. Recent work on civil society, the public sphere, and social capital is congruent with a Tocquevillian analysis of th…
The Reign of Terror in America
Developing Freedom
Thomas Jefferson is often invoked as an advocate of limited government and a defender of individual rights. This article argues that rights were Jefferson's starting place. Jefferson also believed that American citizens should have opportunities to develop the capabilities necessary to enjoy the full use of their rights. Rather than thinking about Jefferson as progovernment or antigovernment, this article concludes that we must understand the par…
Taking Tradition Seriously
America's First Great Depression
An Age of Infidels
Path Dependence and the Emergence of Common Schools
An abstract is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content
Mary Babson Fuhrer. A Crisis of Community
Mary Babson Fuhrer has written a thoughtful, humane book on how dramatic changes spurred by the American Revolution and the market revolution reshaped ordinary lives in Boylston, Massachusetts. Her narrative focuses on Mary White, a diligent diarist, and her family as they went through four tumultuous decades. Fuhrer argues that over those decades, “Mary and her neighbors asserted an unprecedented degree of personal autonomy and individual libert…
Commons Democracy
The discipline of history, argues James Turner, emerged to provide context necessary to understand texts, especially classical and Biblical ones. Over time, history became a discipline with its own content and practices.1 In Commons Democracy, Dana Nelson, a literary scholar, uses history in its philological manner, providing a new context to make sense of the novels of the early republic by rereading them in light of recent historiography. She o…
The History of American Higher Education
(2016). The History of American Higher Education: Learning and Culture from the Founding to World War II. The Journal of Higher Education: Vol. 87, No. 2, pp. 300-302
Democracy's Schools
Civic Longing
In the midst of the transnational turn in American letters and historiography, Carrie Hyde explores the nature of “civic longing,” in which real and imagined outsiders cultivated a desire to be part of the American nation. A work of literary criticism, Hyde argues that, prior to the 14th amendment, citizenship in the U.S. was defined through “culture” rather than law. “In the absence of a centralized legal definition of citizenship,” Hyde writes,…
From Polity to Exchange
Gordon Wood stoked a strong response from his fellow early American historians in 2015 when, in the pages of the Weekly Standard , he accused the Omohundro Institute of Early American History, publishers of the prestigious William and Mary Quarterly , of abandoning interest in the development of the United States. “A new generation of historians is no longer interested in how the United States came to be,” Wood argued. “That kind of narrative his…
Social Capital, Civic Labor, and State Capacity in the Early American Republic
This article examines the local roots of the American state to complicate existing historiography. It suggests that, for education and law, the state tapped into local social capital to develop capacity. State and local governments relied on the mobilization of citizens’ bodies—civic labor—to provide public goods. In doing so, it suggests that we need to offer a story that captures the myriad ways that Americans engaged in state-building, and how…
Anti-intellectualism and education reform
It is a strange and sobering experience to read Hofstadter in our own anti-intellectual era. If anything, left-leaning intellectuals’ sense of alienation has increased since the 1990s. To challenge anti-intellectualism in American education, the liberal arts and sciences will need to be restored to their central place in the curriculum
Jefferson's Legal Commonplace Book
Jefferson's Legal Commonplace Book Jefferson's Legal Commonplace Book. Ed. by David Thomas Konig and Michael P. Zuckert. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019. xxiv, 665 pp. $150.00.) Johann N Neem Johann N Neem Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 107, Issue 3, December 2020, Pages 744–745, https://doi.org/10.1093/…
R oger L. G eiger . American Higher Education since World War II
American Higher Education since World War II completes Roger L. Geiger’s history of the rise and fall of the American research university and academic values. In the first volume, History of American Higher Education: Learning and Culture from the Founding to World War II (2015), Geiger argued that there have been three consistent purposes for higher education: “knowledge, careers, and culture.” In that volume, Geiger explained why and how Americ…
The Common School Awakening
Political science (27 works) · Sociology (25 works) · Law (23 works) · Politics (19 works) · American Constitutional Law and Politics (16 works) · History (16 works) · Law (13 works) · History (12 works) · Democracy (11 works) · Philosophy (8 works)