T. J. Jackson Lears
T. J. Jackson Lears(born 1947) is an American cultural and intellectual historian with interests in comparative religious history, literature and the visual arts, folklore and folk beliefs.
"It may seem unlikely that there is still something original to say about deep America; so many brilliant minds, starting with Tocqueville, have been at work deciphering the paradoxes of our all too mythic, all too preponderant country. But if anyone can, it is likely to be the author ofSomething for Nothing.No one is thinking with more spiritedness and subtlety about the roots (and ethical tangle) of American culture and the distinctive American pursuit of happiness than Jackson Lears, "Susan Sontag wrote in 2003. [1]
Life[edit]
Lears was educated at theUniversity of Virginia,theUniversity of North Carolina,andYale University,where he received a Ph.D. in American Studies.
He has held fellowships from theGuggenheim Foundation,theRockefeller Foundation,theAmerican Council of Learned Societies,theNational Endowment for the Humanities,theWinterthur Museum,theSmithsonian Institution,and the Shelby Cullom Davis Center atPrinceton University.In October 2003 he received the Public Humanities Award from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, and in 2009 he was elected a Fellow of the American academy of Arts and Sciences.
He has been a regular contributor toThe New Republic,The Nation,The Los Angeles Times,The Washington Post,The New York Times,and other publications.
He has taught at Yale University, theUniversity of Missouri,andNew York University.
Lears is the Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of History atRutgers Universityand editor-in-chief of theRaritan Quarterly Review.
He has written essays and reviews inThe New York Times,The Nation,The New York Review of Books,theLondon Review of Books,The New Republic,and other magazines.
Books[edit]
- No Place of Grace: Antimodernism and the Transformation of American Culture, 1880–1920(1981).
- Fables of Abundance: A Cultural History of Advertising in America(1994).
- Something for Nothing: Luck in America(2003).
- Rebirth of a Nation: The Making of Modern America, 1877–1920(2009).
- Animal Spirits: the American Pursuit of Vitality from Camp Meeting to Wall Street(2023)
Articles[edit]
- Jackson Lears,"Imperial Exceptionalism" (review ofVictor Bulmer-Thomas,Empire in Retreat: The Past, Present, and Future of the United States,Yale University Press, 2018,ISBN978-0-300-21000-2,459 pp.; andDavid C. Hendrickson,Republic in Peril: American Empire and the Liberal Tradition,Oxford University Press, 2017,ISBN978-0190660383,287 pp.),The New York Review of Books,vol. LXVI, no. 2 (February 7, 2019), pp. 8-10.
- Jackson Lears,"The Forgotten Crime of War Itself" (review ofSamuel Moyn,Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War,Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021, 400 pp.),The New York Review of Books,vol. LXIX, no. 7 (April 21, 2022), pp. 40–42. "After September 11 [2001] no politician asked whether the proper response to aterrorist attackshould be a US war or an international police action. [...] Debatingtortureor other abuses, while indisputably valuable, has diverted Americans from 'deliberating on the deeper choice they were making to ignore constraints on starting war in the first place.' [W]ar itself causes far more suffering than violations of its rules. "(p. 40.)
- ^Susan Sontag, endorsement for Jackson Lears,Something for Nothing: :Luck in AmericaNew York: Viking Press, 2003, p. ii. ''
External links[edit]
- Jackson Lears,faculty page, Rutgers University
- Articles by Jackson LearsinThe New York Times
- Articles by Jackson LearsinThe Nation
- Articles by Jackson LearsinThe London Review of Books
- Articles by Jackson LearsinThe New Republic
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