Remembering Herbert Gutman's Work, Culture, and Society Fifty Years On

• Published in: Labor (Durham, N.C.) N.C.), 2023-05, Vol.20 (2), p.95-100
• Main Author: Brier, Stephen
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: American history; American Studies; Colleagues; Historical analysis; History; Labor; Scholarship; Social history; Sociology; Teachers
• ISSN: 1547-6715; 1558-1454
• DOI: 10.1215/15476715-10329834

Along with the late distinguished historian Ira Berlin, my colleagues and I at CUNY's American Social History Project (ASHP) had the privilege of being the people who worked most closely with Herb Gutman in the final half-dozen years of his all-too-short life and career. In his final years, as he had for much of the previous three decades of his work, Herb remained deeply committed to questioning accepted historical truths and using new methodologies to transform historical analysis and to popularize the writing of American history for a broad public audience. In pursuit of these connected goals, Gutman constantly posed difficult questions about the past to his colleagues, collaborators, and students: What are the proper subjects of historical inquiry? How can we conduct the most effective scholarly research? How do we evaluate and best present the results of that research? In addition to being an innovative scholar, Herb was also an inspired teacher who always challenged all who came in contact with him to discover innovative ways to convey what happened in the past and to rethink its larger meaning for American society in general and for the writing and rewriting of American history in specific.