Steven Conn
Biographic Data
| ID | 3630126 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Steven Conn |
| GIVEN NAMES | Steven |
| FAMILY NAME | Conn |
| SIGNATURE | CONN S |
| AFFILIATIONS | Miami University |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 8 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 24 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Sub-Urban or Post-Rural
This article argues that because a center–periphery model has dominated our understanding of postwar suburban growth we have failed to fully understand the rural dimensions of that growth. That misunderstanding resulted from the urban orientation of sociologists who studied the suburbs. As a consequence, we have also not appreciated the extent to which rural political outlooks shaped the postwar backlash against New Deal liberalism in the suburbs
Crisis? What Crisis
It has become conventional wisdom to say that rural America is (and rural Americans are) in “crisis,” and this has generated a cottage industry of commentary from journalists, academics, politicians, policy makers, and others. Sometimes the story of crisis is economic: jobs harder and harder to find in the rural pockets of the nation. Sometimes it is social: rural isolation and desperation that lead to drug addiction and suicide. Whatever its cau…
Jesse Tarbert. When Good Government Meant Big Government
Journal Article Jesse Tarbert. When Good Government Meant Big Government: The Quest to Expand Federal Power, 1913–1933. Get access Jesse Tarbert. When Good Government Meant Big Government: The Quest to Expand Federal Power, 1913–1933. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. Pp. 256. Paper $30.00. Steven Conn Steven Conn Miami University, US Email: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Am…
Staging Indigeneity
I never went to see Blue Jacket, a Native-themed outdoor drama, though I live roughly ten miles from the place where it ran from 1982–2008. It struck me as hopelessly hokey and more than a little offensive. After reading Katrina Phillips's book Staging Indigeneity, I kind of wish I had taken the trip. Phillips examines three, long-running outdoor dramas that feature Native Americans through the lens of what she calls “salvage tourism.” The phrase…
Fresh Kills
Fresh Kills: A history of consuming and discarding in New York City, by Martin V. Melosi." Journal of Urban Affairs, 44(1), pp. 98–99
Words or Things in American History?
This chapter uses John Kouwenhoven’s 1963 essay “American Studies: Words or Things” as a touchstone to examine the history of the relationship between material culture and the study of the past. Material culture studies promised access both to the history of those who left no written records and to a different kind of cognitive insight than could be gained from traditional historical sources. While this was of a piece with the development of the …
K arilyn C rockett . People before Highways
When President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act in 1956, it was hailed by some as the greatest public works endeavor in American history and perhaps the greatest single feat of engineering ever undertaken. Those assessments might have been hyperbolic, but there is no doubt that the bill enjoyed widespread popularity. The Senate approved this version of the act 89–1. For the better part of two decades in the mid-twentieth centu…
AHR Conversation
Since 2006, the AHR has published eleven “Conversations” on a wide range of topics. By now, we have a standard format: the Editor convenes a group of scholars with an interest in the topic who, via e-mail over the course of several months, conduct a conversation that is then lightly edited and footnoted, finally appearing in the December issue. The aim is to provide readers with a wide-ranging and accessible consideration of a topic at a high lev…
Excavating Nauvoo
Every year since 1982 the Society for Historical Archaeology has awarded the J. C. Harrington Medal to an archaeologist who “made outstanding contributions to the field.” The back of the medal depicts three famous archaeological sites, including the Mormon Temple in Nauvoo, Illinois. The medal itself is named after a man deeply involved in the archaeology and restoration of Nauvoo. At some level, that is the organizing rationale for this book. As…
The Dying City
“And we ourselves, the newcomers to the Village, were leaving it if we could. The long process of deracination had reached its climax....Now even New York seemed too American, too close to home.” So wrote Cowley in 1934, looking back to the scene of his departure from New York in 1921. Like so many of his generation, Cowley was headed to Paris. “Most of our friends had sailed already,” he continued, “the Village was almost deserted, except for th…
William S. Walker. A Living Exhibition
To Promote the General Welfare
Americans love to hate their government, and a long tradition of anti-government suspicion reaches back to debates among the founders of the nation. But the election of Barack Obama has created a backlash rivaled only by the anti-government hysteria that preceded the Civil War. Lost in all the Tea Party rage and rhetoric is this simple fact: the federal government plays a central role in making society function, and it always has. This book explo…
Our House? The President’s House at Independence National Historical Park
Back to the Garden
This essay examines the complicated relationship among hippie communes, the environmental movement, and New Left and Black Power militants in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In those relationships lie the roots of the divide that separated environmental issues on one hand and urban issues on the other during the 1970s and beyond. This essay examines how the fight between militants and back-to-the-land communards and environmentalists, between wha…
Heritage vs. History at the National Museum of the American Indian
Review Article| January 01 2006 Heritage vs. History at the National Museum of the American Indian STEVEN CONN STEVEN CONN STEVEN CONN is the author of Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876–1926 and History's Shadow: Native Americans and Historical Consciousness in the Nineteenth Century both from the University of Chicago Press. He directs the Public History Program at Ohio State University. Search for other works by this author on: This …
Narrative Trauma and Civil War History Painting, or Why Are These Pictures So Terrible
The Civil War generated hundreds of history paintings. Yet, as this essay argues, painters failed to create any iconic, lasting images of the Civil War using the conventions of grand manner history painting, despite the expectations of many that they would and should. This essay first examines the terms by which I am evaluating this failure, then moves on to a consideration of the American history painting tradition. I next examine several histor…
Agonizing over Indians
Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans. By Anthony F. C. Wallace. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. 394 pages $29.95 (cloth). WHEN I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF READING ANTHONY F. C. WALLACE'S BOOK Jefferson and the Indians, the New York Times reported yet another story about the "strong evidence" proving Thomas Jefferson had fathered at least one "if not all six of the children of Sally He…
Where Is the East
As objects from China and Japan made their way into American collections during the nineteenth century, museums faced the categorical problem of how best to classify and display them. For some, these objects belonged in the category of "fine art"; for others, they belonged more properly in the category of anthropology or ethnology. By the 1920s, this debate had largely been resolved in favor of "art." At stake, of course, was the larger question …
Native Americans and the Early Republic
Cultural Literacy, Historic Preservation, and Commemoration
Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926
Journal Article Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876–1926. By Steven Conn. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. vii, 305 pp. $32.50, ISBN 0-226-11492-9.) Get access Christopher Clarke-Hazlett Christopher Clarke-Hazlett Rochesten, New York Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 86, Issue 3, December 1999, Page 1364, https://doi.org/10.2307/2568672 Published: 01 D…
History in Urban Places
Journal Article History in Urban Places: The Historic Districts of the United States. By David Hamer. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998. xiv, 277 pp. Cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-8142-0789-8. Paper, $19.95 and Bostons “Changeful Times”: Origins of Preservation & Planning in America. By Michael Holleran. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. xii, 337 pp. $39.95 Get access Steven Conn Steven Conn Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio S…
An Epistemology for Empire
In the summer of 1893, William Wilson, a professor of botany at the University of Pennsylvania, joined millions of other Americans at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The White City, as the fair had come to be known, amazed Wilson just as it had so many other visitors. Unlike his compatriots, however, Wilson returned home resolved not to let the experience of the fair simply fade into memory. Instead, Wilson decided that he would crea…
Killing Time
Public Culture in the Early Republic
Heritage vs. History at the National Museum of the American Indian
Review Article| January 01 2006 Heritage vs. History at the National Museum of the American Indian STEVEN CONN STEVEN CONN STEVEN CONN is the author of Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876–1926 and History's Shadow: Native Americans and Historical Consciousness in the Nineteenth Century both from the University of Chicago Press. He directs the Public History Program at Ohio State University. Search for other works by this author on: This …
Narrative Trauma and Civil War History Painting, or Why Are These Pictures So Terrible
The Civil War generated hundreds of history paintings. Yet, as this essay argues, painters failed to create any iconic, lasting images of the Civil War using the conventions of grand manner history painting, despite the expectations of many that they would and should. This essay first examines the terms by which I am evaluating this failure, then moves on to a consideration of the American history painting tradition. I next examine several histor…
Native Americans and the Early Republic
Cultural Literacy, Historic Preservation, and Commemoration
Public Culture in the Early Republic
Killing Time
An Epistemology for Empire
In the summer of 1893, William Wilson, a professor of botany at the University of Pennsylvania, joined millions of other Americans at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago. The White City, as the fair had come to be known, amazed Wilson just as it had so many other visitors. Unlike his compatriots, however, Wilson returned home resolved not to let the experience of the fair simply fade into memory. Instead, Wilson decided that he would crea…
Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926
Journal Article Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876–1926. By Steven Conn. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998. vii, 305 pp. $32.50, ISBN 0-226-11492-9.) Get access Christopher Clarke-Hazlett Christopher Clarke-Hazlett Rochesten, New York Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of American History, Volume 86, Issue 3, December 1999, Page 1364, https://doi.org/10.2307/2568672 Published: 01 D…
History in Urban Places
Journal Article History in Urban Places: The Historic Districts of the United States. By David Hamer. Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1998. xiv, 277 pp. Cloth, $49.95, ISBN 0-8142-0789-8. Paper, $19.95 and Bostons “Changeful Times”: Origins of Preservation & Planning in America. By Michael Holleran. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998. xii, 337 pp. $39.95 Get access Steven Conn Steven Conn Ohio State University Columbus, Ohio S…
Where Is the East
As objects from China and Japan made their way into American collections during the nineteenth century, museums faced the categorical problem of how best to classify and display them. For some, these objects belonged in the category of "fine art"; for others, they belonged more properly in the category of anthropology or ethnology. By the 1920s, this debate had largely been resolved in favor of "art." At stake, of course, was the larger question …
Native Americans and the Early Republic
Cultural Literacy, Historic Preservation, and Commemoration
Agonizing over Indians
Jefferson and the Indians: The Tragic Fate of the First Americans. By Anthony F. C. Wallace. Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999. 394 pages $29.95 (cloth). WHEN I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF READING ANTHONY F. C. WALLACE'S BOOK Jefferson and the Indians, the New York Times reported yet another story about the "strong evidence" proving Thomas Jefferson had fathered at least one "if not all six of the children of Sally He…
Narrative Trauma and Civil War History Painting, or Why Are These Pictures So Terrible
The Civil War generated hundreds of history paintings. Yet, as this essay argues, painters failed to create any iconic, lasting images of the Civil War using the conventions of grand manner history painting, despite the expectations of many that they would and should. This essay first examines the terms by which I am evaluating this failure, then moves on to a consideration of the American history painting tradition. I next examine several histor…
Heritage vs. History at the National Museum of the American Indian
Review Article| January 01 2006 Heritage vs. History at the National Museum of the American Indian STEVEN CONN STEVEN CONN STEVEN CONN is the author of Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876–1926 and History's Shadow: Native Americans and Historical Consciousness in the Nineteenth Century both from the University of Chicago Press. He directs the Public History Program at Ohio State University. Search for other works by this author on: This …
Back to the Garden
This essay examines the complicated relationship among hippie communes, the environmental movement, and New Left and Black Power militants in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In those relationships lie the roots of the divide that separated environmental issues on one hand and urban issues on the other during the 1970s and beyond. This essay examines how the fight between militants and back-to-the-land communards and environmentalists, between wha…
Our House? The President’s House at Independence National Historical Park
To Promote the General Welfare
Americans love to hate their government, and a long tradition of anti-government suspicion reaches back to debates among the founders of the nation. But the election of Barack Obama has created a backlash rivaled only by the anti-government hysteria that preceded the Civil War. Lost in all the Tea Party rage and rhetoric is this simple fact: the federal government plays a central role in making society function, and it always has. This book explo…
William S. Walker. A Living Exhibition
The Dying City
“And we ourselves, the newcomers to the Village, were leaving it if we could. The long process of deracination had reached its climax....Now even New York seemed too American, too close to home.” So wrote Cowley in 1934, looking back to the scene of his departure from New York in 1921. Like so many of his generation, Cowley was headed to Paris. “Most of our friends had sailed already,” he continued, “the Village was almost deserted, except for th…
K arilyn C rockett . People before Highways
When President Dwight Eisenhower signed the Federal-Aid Highway Act in 1956, it was hailed by some as the greatest public works endeavor in American history and perhaps the greatest single feat of engineering ever undertaken. Those assessments might have been hyperbolic, but there is no doubt that the bill enjoyed widespread popularity. The Senate approved this version of the act 89–1. For the better part of two decades in the mid-twentieth centu…
AHR Conversation
Since 2006, the AHR has published eleven “Conversations” on a wide range of topics. By now, we have a standard format: the Editor convenes a group of scholars with an interest in the topic who, via e-mail over the course of several months, conduct a conversation that is then lightly edited and footnoted, finally appearing in the December issue. The aim is to provide readers with a wide-ranging and accessible consideration of a topic at a high lev…
Excavating Nauvoo
Every year since 1982 the Society for Historical Archaeology has awarded the J. C. Harrington Medal to an archaeologist who “made outstanding contributions to the field.” The back of the medal depicts three famous archaeological sites, including the Mormon Temple in Nauvoo, Illinois. The medal itself is named after a man deeply involved in the archaeology and restoration of Nauvoo. At some level, that is the organizing rationale for this book. As…
Words or Things in American History?
This chapter uses John Kouwenhoven’s 1963 essay “American Studies: Words or Things” as a touchstone to examine the history of the relationship between material culture and the study of the past. Material culture studies promised access both to the history of those who left no written records and to a different kind of cognitive insight than could be gained from traditional historical sources. While this was of a piece with the development of the …
Fresh Kills
Fresh Kills: A history of consuming and discarding in New York City, by Martin V. Melosi." Journal of Urban Affairs, 44(1), pp. 98–99
Staging Indigeneity
I never went to see Blue Jacket, a Native-themed outdoor drama, though I live roughly ten miles from the place where it ran from 1982–2008. It struck me as hopelessly hokey and more than a little offensive. After reading Katrina Phillips's book Staging Indigeneity, I kind of wish I had taken the trip. Phillips examines three, long-running outdoor dramas that feature Native Americans through the lens of what she calls “salvage tourism.” The phrase…
Sub-Urban or Post-Rural
This article argues that because a center–periphery model has dominated our understanding of postwar suburban growth we have failed to fully understand the rural dimensions of that growth. That misunderstanding resulted from the urban orientation of sociologists who studied the suburbs. As a consequence, we have also not appreciated the extent to which rural political outlooks shaped the postwar backlash against New Deal liberalism in the suburbs
Crisis? What Crisis
It has become conventional wisdom to say that rural America is (and rural Americans are) in “crisis,” and this has generated a cottage industry of commentary from journalists, academics, politicians, policy makers, and others. Sometimes the story of crisis is economic: jobs harder and harder to find in the rural pockets of the nation. Sometimes it is social: rural isolation and desperation that lead to drug addiction and suicide. Whatever its cau…
Jesse Tarbert. When Good Government Meant Big Government
Journal Article Jesse Tarbert. When Good Government Meant Big Government: The Quest to Expand Federal Power, 1913–1933. Get access Jesse Tarbert. When Good Government Meant Big Government: The Quest to Expand Federal Power, 1913–1933. New York: Columbia University Press, 2022. Pp. 256. Paper $30.00. Steven Conn Steven Conn Miami University, US Email: [email protected] Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The Am…
History (19 works) · Political science (14 works) · Sociology (11 works) · History (10 works) · Archaeology (9 works) · Art (9 works) · Art history (9 works) · Law (9 works) · Philosophy (7 works) · Politics (6 works)