Professional Affiliation

Henry Charles Lea Professor of History, Princeton University

Wilson Center Project

"Looking Back: Social Ideas in 1980s America"

Project Summary

"Looking Back: Social Ideas in 1980s America" will be the first integrated, book-length analysis of the social politics of ideas in what now seems clearly on of the watershed decades of the twentieth century, including the unexpected return of market metaphors to the center of social-political debate in 1980s America, the struggle for authority over the languages of sexuality, religion, and race, and contests over national memory, identity, and narrative in the twilight of the Cold War.