Anti-Intellectualism in American History

press release: Join us for the final 2016 lecture in the Library's Scholar'd for Life series!

Thursday, September 8th, at 7:00 PM

Middleton Public Library - Archer Room

Long before historian Richard Hofstadter’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Anti-Intellectualism in American Life (1962), Ralph Waldo Emerson cautioned about the potential irreconcilability of democracy and rigorous intellect: "The mind of this country, taught to aim at low objects, eats upon itself." This talk will examine how and why concerns about American anti-intellectualism have come to dominate American public life, setting up for a discussion about the scope and nature of anti-intellectualism in the US today.

Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen, a professor of the history of philosophy, visits the library for the final 2016 lecture in our Scholar'd for Life series.  Professor Ratner-Rosenhagen will present a lecture entitled "Anti-Intellectualism in American History."

Ratner-Rosenhagen is the Merle Curti Associate Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and author of American Nietzsche: A History of an Icon and His Ideas, published by the University of Chicago Press.

Ratner-Rosenhagen's research and teaching interests include the history of philosophy, political and social theory, religion, literature, and the visual arts; the transatlantic flow of intellectual and cultural movements; print culture; and cultural studies. Her publications are of both academic and general interest. All explore the links between intellectual life, the trafficking of ideas, and American culture.

Along with her academic scholarship and teaching, she is also the founder of the Intellectual History Group at UW-Madison, an informal, interdisciplinary working group for faculty and graduate students interested in the varieties of intellectual history and history of ideas.

Registration for this event is appreciated.  Online here or by email at info@midlibrary.org

Thanks as always to the Friends of the Middleton Public Library for funding this event!