Stephen J Whitfield
Biographic Data
| ID | 235639 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Stephen J Whitfield |
| GIVEN NAMES | Stephen J |
| FAMILY NAME | Whitfield |
| SIGNATURE | WHITFIELD S J |
| AFFILIATIONS | Brandeis University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9430-2290 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 166 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 54 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 166 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
We Are Not One: A History of America's Fight over Israel
How to Come Alive with Norman Mailer (a cautionary tale)
American Jews Face the Ku Klux Klan, 1865–2025
The hostility that the Ku Klux Klan exhibited toward Jews and other minorities (Blacks, Catholics, immigrants) has long attracted the scholarly interest of American historians. They have shown virtually no interest in the ways in which American Jews—either collectively or individually—opposed the “Invisible Empire.” It emerged in three distinct postwar periods—after the Civil War, exclusively in the South, by deploying violence to undermine the a…
Postwar Stories: How Books Made Judaism American, written by Rachel Gordan
Red Reckoning: The Cold War and the Transformation of American Life by Mark Boulton and Tobias T. Gibson
The thesis of this engaging anthology can be simply stated. Over roughly half a century, the Cold War produced such ubiquitous effects on U.S. society that some of its oddest margins can reveal the impact of the geopolitical conflict. The proof of its shadow over the conduct and attitudes of ordinary citizens lies in the unsuspected, unexplored domains that conventional political historians might otherwise have ignored. The promise of such a thes…
Alan T. Levenson, Maurice Samuel: Life and Letters of a Secular Jewish Contrarian
Journal Article Alan T. Levenson, Maurice Samuel: Life and Letters of a Secular Jewish Contrarian Get access Alan T. Levenson, Maurice Samuel: Life and Letters of a Secular Jewish Contrarian (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2022). xiii + 221 pp. Stephen Whitfield Stephen Whitfield Brandeis University, USA [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Modern Judaism - A Journal of Jewish …
A fight for racial equality in Florida
The legacy of Richard H. King
Oppenheimer
Journal Article Oppenheimer Get access Oppenheimer. Dir. by Christopher Nolan. Prod. by Emma Thomas, Charles Roven, and Christopher Nolan. Universal Pictures, 2023. 180 mins. (https://www.oppenheimermovie.com) Stephen J Whitfield Stephen J Whitfield Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 111, Issue 1, June 2024, Pages 200–203, https:/…
The Incomparable Mr. Buckley
Gold Standard
The subjects of these two books basically belonged to the same generation. Philip Rahv (1908–73) and Michael Gold (1894–1967) shared origins in the Jewish lower class, and rose to literary prominence during the Great Depression. But from the perspective of posterity, what especially links their names is the notion of “proletarian literature.” In novels and short stories, in sketches and poetry, in drama and reportage, the writers who generally ac…
Till
Journal Article Till Get access Till. Created by Reilly Michael, Keith Beauchamp, and Chinonye Chukwu. Dir. by Chinonye Chukwu. Prod. by Michael Reilley, Keith Beauchamp, and Whoopi Goldberg. Orion Pictures. Distributed by Universal Studios, United Artists Releasing, 2022. 130 mins. (https://www.mgmstudios.com/till/home/) Stephen J Whitfield Stephen J Whitfield Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts Search for other works by this author on: …
Florida: From Tourism to Troubles
Among the fifty states of the American republic, only a very few can project a mystique, a special mythic spirit. From the middle of the nineteenth century, when natural springs and lush foliage attracted some explorers and well-to-do visitors, to the present, when Walt Disney World welcomes many millions of tourists, Florida has offered alluring pleasures. Since the land boom in Miami in the 1920s down to our own day, the state has become home f…
The Pentagon Papers as History
This article examines the most consequential Constitutional case in American history regarding the right of the press to expose the origins of a war – while it was still being fought. The crisis of the early summer of 1971 was unprecedented. In the past, for the sake of national security, limitations had sometimes been imposed on newspapers and magazines condemning the war that was being fought – most notoriously, in the twentieth century, during…
Projecting Politics: The Grapes of Wrath
Publié en 1939 et adapté à l’écran l’année suivante, Les Raisins de la colère, roman de John Steinbeck, eut un impact immédiat et extraordinaire pour le portrait sans concession qu’il dressait d’un capitalisme américain qui semblait avoir abandonné sa progéniture la plus loyale, la plus assidue et la plus courageuse, celle qui labourait la terre en plein cœur de la république. Écrit à la toute fin de la « Décennie rouge », mais juste avant que le…
The American Century of Henry R. Luce
Stephen J. Whitfield se penche ici sur l’éditorial controversé du magnat de la presse américain Henry R. Luce, “The American Century”, publié dans le magazine Life le 17 février 1941. Paru en temps de crise – la Grande Dépression – et de guerres – celle en Mandchourie mais aussi la Seconde Guerre mondiale – son éditorial proposait une mission nationale commune selon laquelle les Etats-Unis, étant donné leur exceptionnalisme, devaient d’une part m…
A Poet Illumines the Pandemic
In homage to Dr. Denis Mukwege A Poet Illumines the Pandemic The title of W. H. Auden’s “September 1, 1939” might seem to require that this poem be time-bound rather than timeless. He composed it at the end of what the first stanza calls “a low dishonest decade,” when the ambitions of two murderous versions of totalitarianism seemed to have advanced unimpeded. Whether stemming from Berlin or from Moscow, the “waves of anger and fear” were threate…
Freedom at the Center
Of course it's brilliant. The Free World represents the hugely ambitious culmination of the efforts of a scholar of exceptional talent to explicate mid-century American culture, and to put it within a broad political and social context. With its immense attention to detail, The Free World frequently offers such fresh readings of a wide variety of topics that perhaps only subspecialists can profess to find familiar the evidence and interpretations…
Obituary: Richard H. King (1942–2022)
My Name Is Pauli Murray
Posterity has been kinder to Pauli Murray (1910–1985) than many of her contemporaries were. A third of a century after her death, the Department of the Interior designated her childhood home in Durham, North Carolina, a National Historic Monument; and visitors to the Pauli Murray Center for History and Social Justice in that city can learn more about her than this fine documentary has time to reveal. Yale University opened up a residential colleg…
Whatever Happened to Henri Bergson
In the early decades of the twentieth century, Henri Bergson (1859–1941) ranked among the world’s most eminent philosophers. His distinction between clock-time and time as subjectively experienced, as well as his invocation of the élan vital as driving humanity to higher planes of creativity and freedom, enabled him to enjoy unparalleled influence among French students as well as international writers. Bergson personified philosophy. He also seem…
Aaron Copland’s Hollywood Film Scores by Paula Musegades
Reviewed by: Aaron Copland’s Hollywood Film Scores by Paula Musegades Stephen J. Whitfield (bio) Aaron Copland’s Hollywood Film Scores. By Paula Musegades. Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2020. 201 pp., ISBN-13 978-1-58046-991-3 (hc). US $99.00. In 1999, when the US Postal Service sought to honor the composers of film scores, a block of six stamps was issued. All of them featured Jews: Bernard Herrmann (Citizen Kane, Psycho, Taxi Dr…
Toward Nationalism’s End: An Intellectual Biography of Hans Kohn, written by Adi Gordon
John Lewis: Good Trouble
Very few members of the U.S. Congress ever posted so flagrantly lawless a set of credentials as John Lewis (1940–2020). His rap sheet included over three dozen arrests, all of them for conduct that entailed civil disobedience. In choosing so frequently to honor the claims of conscience over the rule of law, he organized his life around the same dilemma that Mark Twain's most famous character faced; and—in this respect only—Representative Lewis sh…
Masculinity in the Movies of David Mamet
The Culture of the Cold War
Nixon's Shadow. The History of an Image
Daniel Bell and the Decline of Intellectual Radicalism: Social Theory and Political Reconciliation in the 1940s
What causes a generation of intellectuals to switch its political allegiances in particular, to move from the opposition to the mainstream? In U.S. history, it is the experience of the Old Left intellectuals, who swung from avowal of socialism or Communism in the 1930s to apology for American liberalism in the 1950s, that raises this question pointedly. In this highly original and broadsweeping study, Howard Brick focuses on the career of Daniel …
Giants of Enterprise. Seven Business Innovators and the Empires They Built
Seven business innovators and the empires they built. The pre-eminent business historian of our time, Richard S. Tedlow, examines seven great CEOs who successfully managed cutting-edge technology and formed enduring corporate empires. With the depth and clarity of a master, Tedlow illuminates the minds, lives and strategies behind the legendary successes of our times: . George Eastman and his invention of the Kodak camera; . Thomas Watson of IBM;…
American Dreams: The United States since 1945
With barely twelve pages of endnotes to backstop a substantial text that dares to cover two-thirds of a century, and bereft of either a bibliography or an explicit challenge to regnant interpretations, American Dreams makes no claim to advance a reexamination of recent American history. This volume therefore should not be judged on unfair terms. In it, the frighteningly prolific H. W. Brands has seized an opportunity to consolidate the mainstream…
Enigmas of Modern Jewish Identity
C ^ x *rhat is left of identity when both language and religion are gone? This is the question posed at the outset of a monograph on six twentieth-century Italian writers whom the author, the late H. Stuart Hughes, designates asJewish.1 The difficulty of answering his own question is not reduced because of his choice of writers: Italo Svevo and Alberto Moravia were baptized Catholics whose novels barely contain anyJewish characters. Also a Roman …
The New Republic: A Voice of Modern Liberalism
Journal Article The New Republic: A Voice of Modern Liberalism. By David Seideman. (New York: Praeger, 1986. xv + 205 pp. Cloth, $32.95; paper, $9.95.) Get access Stephen J. Whitfield Stephen J. Whitfield Brandeis University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 74, Issue 4, March 1988, Pages 1376–1377, https://doi.org/10.2307/1894487 Published: 01 March 1988
Franz Boas: The Anthropologist as Public Intellectual
Liberalism and Its Discontents
Secret Agents: The Rosenberg Case, McCarthyism, and Fifties America
Journal Article Secret Agents: The Rosenberg Case, McCarthy ism, and Fifties America. Ed. by Marjorie Garber and Rebecca L. Walkowitz. New York: Routledge, 1995 and The Press, the Rosenbergs, and the Cold War. By John F. Neville. Westport: Praeger, 1995 Get access Stephen J. Whitfield Stephen J. Whitfield Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American Histor…
Richard Nixon as a Comic Figure
The American Jewish story through cinema
The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy
Journal Article The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy Get access The Preacher and the Presidents: Billy Graham in the White House by Nancy Gibbs and Michael Duffy. New York, Center Street, 2007. 432 pp. Cloth, $26.99; paper, $14.99. Stephen J. Whitfield Stephen J. Whitfield Brandeis University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Political Science Quar…
Towards an appreciation of American Jewish Humor
From the era of the early republic, American humor has drawn from the frontier ethos that valued domineering triumphs over nature and over others. The tradition of masculine posturing and physical bravery was countered in the twentieth century by Jewish comedians who punctured brawn with brain and who played with anti‐Semitic stereotypes as well as showing the advantages of business acumen. Instead of glorifying winners, as mainstream frontier hu…
Necrology: Leon Uris (1924-2003)
T H E J E W I S H QUA R T E R LY RE V I E W, Vol. 94, No. 4 (Fall 2004) 666–671 Necrology Leon Uris (1924–2003) STEPHEN J . W HITFIELD MOST FAMOUS FOR Exodus, the American novelist Leon Uris died in 2003, at the age of seventy-eight. Though he wrote nearly two dozen other books, including other novels on Jewish themes, such as Mila 18 (1961) and The Haj (1984), Uris’s reputation rests on the 1958 ‘‘novel of Israel’’ that ranked first on the New Y…
Where They Burn Books
1Brandeis University
Betty Friedan and the Making of the Feminine Mystique: The American Left, the Cold War and Modern Feminism
American Popular Culture at Home and Abroad
Journal Article American Popular Culture at Home and Abroad. Ed. by Lewis H. Carlson and Kevin B. Vichcales. (Kalamazoo: Western Michigan University Press, 1996. xxiv, 387 pp. Cloth, $32.00, ISBN 0-932826-42-3. Paper, $16.00, ISBN 0-932826-43-1.) Get access Stephen J. Whitfield Stephen J. Whitfield Brandeis University Waltham, Massachusetts Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volum…
The Distinctiveness of American Jewish Humor
Journal Article THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF AMERICAN JEWISH HUMOR Get access Stephen J. Whitfield Stephen J. Whitfield BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Modern Judaism - A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience, Volume 6, Issue 3, October 1986, Pages 245–260, https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/6.3.245 Published: 01 October 1986
Autopsy Notes on American Socialism
The 1950's: The Era of No Hard Feelings
Research Article| July 01 1975 The 1950’s: The Era of No Hard Feelings Stephen J. Whitfield Stephen J. Whitfield Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1975) 74 (3): 289–307. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-74-3-289 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Stephen J. Whitfield; The 1950’s: The Era of No Hard Feelings. South Atlantic Quarterly 1…
Mars and Minerva: World War I and the Uses of the Higher Learning in America
Journal Article Mars and Minerva: World War I and the Uses of the Higher Learning in America. By Carol S. Gruber. (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1975. x + 293 pp. Notes, selected bibliography, and index. $17.50.) Get access Stephen J. Whitfield Stephen J. Whitfield Brandeis University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 63, Issue 3, December 1976, Pages 753–…
The New Left and the New Values
Three Masters of Impression Management
Research Article| October 01 1978 Three Masters of Impression Management:Benjamin Franklin, Booker T. Washington, and Malcolm X as Autobiographers Stephen J. Whitfield Stephen J. Whitfield Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1978) 77 (4): 399–417. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-77-4-399 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Stephen J. Wh…
Strangers Within the Gate City: The Jews of Atlanta, 1845-1915
Books in review
Radical Evil
Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical ed. by James Olney
Book Review| April 01 1981 Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical ed. by James Olney Autobiography: Essays Theoretical and Critical. Edited by Olney, James. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980. Pp. 360. $28.50 (cloth), $9.75 (paper). Stephen J. Whitfield Stephen J. Whitfield Brandeis University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1981) 80 (2): 234–235. https://doi.org/10.1215/003828…
Part IV The Journalist as Intellectual. Walter Lippmann: A Career in Media's Rays
Into the Dark: Hannah Arendt and Totalitarianism
Journal Article Into the Dark: Hannah Arendt and Totahtahanism. By Stephen J. Whitfield. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980. xii + 338 pp. Notes, bibliography, and index. $18.95.) Get access David A. Hollinger David A. Hollinger University of Michigan Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 68, Issue 2, September 1981, Pages 444–445, https://doi.org/10.2307/1890067 Pub…
The Pertinence of Garry Wills
Constance Rourke and American Culture by Joan Shelley Rubin
Book Review| July 01 1981 Constance Rourke and American Culture by Joan Shelley Rubin Constance Rourke and American Culture. By Rubin, Joan Shelley. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1980. Pp. xv, 244. $16.00. Stephen J. Whitfield Stephen J. Whitfield Brandeis University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1981) 80 (3): 371–373. https://doi.org/10.1215/00382876-80-3-371a Cite Icon Ci…
The Religious Investigations of William James
In this first detailed examination of Varieties of Religious Experience, Levinson locates James securely in the academic study of religion, demonstrates James's debts to Darwin, and reconstructs the case for the supernatural that James thought so critical to his work. The author discusses the contribution that these religious interests made to James's later work and to the shaping of his theories of pragmatism and radical empiricism.Originally pu…
Innocents Abroad
Authoritarian Socialism in America: Edward Bellamy and the Nationalist Movement
Autobiographical Occasions and Original Acts: Versions of American Identity from Henry Adams to Nate Shaw by Albert E. Stone
Book Review| July 01 1984 Autobiographical Occasions and Original Acts: Versions of American Identity from Henry Adams to Nate Shaw by Albert E. Stone Autobiographical Occasions and Original Acts: Versions of American Identity from Henry Adams to Nate Shaw. By Stone, Albert E.. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1982. Pp. xvi, 349. $28.50 (cloth), $9.95 (paper). Stephen J. Whitfield Stephen J. Whitfield Brandeis University Search for…
The Prophetic Minority: American Jewish Immigrant Radicals, 1880-1920
Journal Article The Prophetic Minority: American Jewish Immigrant Radicals, 1880–1920. By Gerald Sorin. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985. xi + 211 pp. Maps, illustrations, tables, appendix, notes, bibliography, and index. $24.95.) Get access Stephen J. Whitfield Stephen J. Whitfield Brandeis University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 72, Issue 3, December 198…
A Critical American: The Politics of Dwight Macdonald
Journal Article A Critical American: The Politics of Dwight Macdonald. By Stephen J. Whitfield. (Hamden: Archon, 1984. x + 179 pp. Illustration, notes, bibliography, and index. $19.50.) Get access Terry A. Cooney Terry A. Cooney University of Puget Sound Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 72, Issue 2, September 1985, Pages 450–451, https://doi.org/10.2307/1903458 Published:…
Richard Nixon as a Comic Figure
The Distinctiveness of American Jewish Humor
Journal Article THE DISTINCTIVENESS OF AMERICAN JEWISH HUMOR Get access Stephen J. Whitfield Stephen J. Whitfield BRANDEIS UNIVERSITY Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Modern Judaism - A Journal of Jewish Ideas and Experience, Volume 6, Issue 3, October 1986, Pages 245–260, https://doi.org/10.1093/mj/6.3.245 Published: 01 October 1986
Books in review
Disciplinary Problems
Liberation and Its Limits: The Moral and Political Thought of Freud by Jeffrey B. Abramson
Book Review| April 01 1986 Liberation and Its Limits: The Moral and Political Thought of Freud by Jeffrey B. Abramson Liberation and Its Limits: The Moral and Political Thought of Freud. By Abramson, Jeffrey B.. New York: Free Press, 1984. Pp. x, 160. $14.95. Stephen J. Whitfield Stephen J. Whitfield Brandeis University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1986) 85 (2): 197–199. https://doi.org/10.1…
Einstein in America: The Scientist's Conscience in the Age of Hitler and Hiroshima by Jamie Sayen
Book Review| October 01 1986 Einstein in America: The Scientist’s Conscience in the Age of Hitler and Hiroshima by Jamie Sayen Einstein in America: The Scientist’s Conscience in the Age of Hitler and Hiroshima. By Sayen, Jamie. New York: Crown, 1985. Pp. ix, 340. $17.95. Stephen J. Whitfield Stephen J. Whitfield Brandeis University Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google South Atlantic Quarterly (1986) 85 (4): 388–389. https://…
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