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Randall Stephens The November 24, 1954 episode of Longines Chronoscope featured Henry Steele Commager (video embedded here).  That was not unusual for the news and views program , which regularly featured heads of state, intellectuals, novelists, and other notables.  But the subject of the discussion is particularly interesting all these years later.  Maybe that's especially poignant because Commager was one of America's foremost historians at that time. Here he weighs in on American identity, the pressures of conformity, the post-war economic boom, and freedom of expression.   This was filmed in the wake of the Korean War, the hydrogen bomb test on Bikini Atoll, and not long after the historic Brown vs. Topeka Supreme Court decision.  Red Scare paranoia remained strong. The coming month of December would see the US Senate reprimand Joseph McCarthy, by a vote of 67–22, for "conduct that tends to bring the Senate into dishonor and disrepute." Here are some...

Randall Stephens Since 2007 the US Intellectual History (S-USIH) blog has nurtured a lively community of historians. Since then that virtual group has morphed into a series of annual conferences and the Society for US Intellectual History. The revamped S-USIH site is a real model for digital humanities and shows how best to foster conversations within a field. The blog features book reviews, op-eds, think pieces, and essays that frequently spark heated debates in the comments section. (Like many U.S. historians I’ve watched all this with real interest—reading, lurking, and occasionally commenting on posts.) To find out a little bit more about how the website has led to a vibrant Society and what the group does, I recently caught up with key members and founders: Andrew Hartman (Illinois State University), Tim Lacy (Loyola University), Benjamin Alpers (University of Oklahoma), and Ray Haberski (Marian University). Randall Stephens: The US Intellectual History blog started in 2007. Wh...