students at suny brockport help edit a us intellectual history book roundtable on kevin mattson’s we’re not here to entertain: punk rock, ronald reagan, and the real culture war of 1980s america.
Is punk rock intellectual history?
You can decide for yourself by reading the book roundtable on Kevin Mattson’s We’re Not Here to Entertain: Punk Rock, Ronald Reagan, and the Real Culture War of 1980s America, published over the next two weeks at the Society for US Intellectual History Blog and edited with help from students in the Fall 2021 course The American Mind: What Were They Thinking?—US Intellectual History and Digital Editing Practicum, offered by the SUNY Brockport Department of History (the Fall 2022 course still has a few open seats in it for interested students at SUNY Brockport!).
Students worked as editorial assistants, helping nine writers develop their essays. The course combines deep historical inquiry with professional skills development. Students gained skills in historical analysis, research, editing, multimedia publication, and project management. Among the responses, be sure to check out the digital Storymap of punk rock in the early 1980s created by History graduate student Glenn Dowdle.
Over the coming year, I’ll be developing a new project, the US Intellectual History Review. Based at SUNY Brockport’s History Department, it will publish a wide range of features in US intellectual history—very broadly conceived, for both academic and general audiences—at an open-source, online platform.