Jeffrey Brown
Dr. Jeffrey Brown (United States, Transatlantic Modernism/Modernity, American Therapeutics) earned graduate degrees from the State University of New York at Brockport (MA History), York University (MA Social and Political Thought), and was awarded a PhD in History from the University of Rochester before joining the Department in 2002. His dissertation explored the influence of vitalist theories of mind and metaphysics on American intellectual and political culture early in the twentieth century. He is currently preparing this work for publication under the title, Vital Moment: The Philosophy of Life and the Politics of Meaning in Modern America, 1900-1925.
Dr. Brown’s most recent publication is “Wobbly Vitalism: Bergson, Sorel, and the Interpretation of Revolutionary Syndicalism in the United States, 1905-1915” in The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era (April 2018). Other publications include “Situating the Hobo: Romancing the Road from Vagabondia to Hobohemia” in The Chicago School Diaspora: Epistemology and Substance, edited by Jacqueline Low and Gary Bowden (McGill Queens University Press, 2013); a review essay on William James at the Boundaries: Philosophy, Science, and the Geography of Knowledge, by Francesca Bordogna, in Reviews in American History (September 2012); and “Being Present, Owning the Past, and Growing into the Future: Temporality, Revelation, and the Therapeutic Culture” in The River of History: Trans-national and Trans-disciplinary Perspectives on the Immanence of the Past, edited by Perter Farrugia (University of Calagary Press, 2005).
In 2009, Dr. Brown was awarded the Arts Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching. He teaches the foundation survey course in US history as well as a variety of other courses and seminars on American radicalism, American modernism, African American history, US history on film, the United States during the sixties, and on historical theory and methodology. He supervises graduate students in the fields of twentieth century US intellectual and cultural history.
