Draft:Mark Carnes
{{Draft topics|biography|north-america}}
{{AfC topic|blp}}
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{{AfC submission|t||ts=20250520061032|u=HRShami|ns=118|demo=}}{{AFC comment|1=In accordance with the Wikimedia Foundation's Terms of Use, I disclose that I have been paid by my employer for my contributions to this article. HRShami (talk) 06:10, 20 May 2025 (UTC)}}
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{{Infobox academic
| name = Mark Christopher Carnes
| birth_date = {{birth year|1950}}
| birth_place = Pocatello, Idaho
| nationality = American
| occupation = Historian and educator
| education = Newburgh Free Academy (1969)
BA., Harvard University (1974)
PhD., Columbia University (1982)
| spouse = Mary Elin Korchinsky (m. 1976)
| workplaces = Barnard College, Columbia University
}}
Mark Christopher Carnes is an American historian and educator known for founding the Reacting to the Past pedagogy.{{cite journal |last1=Anderson |first1=Carl A. |last2=Dix |first2=T. Keith |title="Reacting to the Past" and the Classics Curriculum: Rome in 44 BCE |journal=The Classical Journal |date=2008 |volume=103 |issue=4 |pages=449–455 |jstor=30038005 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/30038005 |issn=0009-8353}}
After earning his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1982, he joined Barnard College, where he has been a professor of History and chaired the history department from 1992 to 1995.{{cite web|url=https://barnard.edu/profiles/mark-c-carnes|title=Barnard College–Mark C. Carnes|website=Barnard College|access-date=May 6, 2025}} In 1989, he and John A. Garraty became co-editors of the American National Biography (1999).{{cite book|title=American National Biography|editor1-first=John A.|editor1-last=Garraty|editor2-first=Mark C.|editor2-last=Carnes|publisher=Oxford University Press|year= 2005|edition= |isbn=9780199771493 |url=https://search.worldcat.org/title/1101035928}} As that work concluded, he developed Reacting to the Past, an interactive pedagogy in which students engage in complex role-playing games informed by historical texts. He helped refine the methodology and worked as the founding Executive Director of the Reacting Consortium, a nonprofit that oversees its development.{{cite web|url=https://reactingconsortium.org/consortium|title=About the Reacting Consortium|website=Reacting Consortium|access-date=May 6, 2025}}
Early life and education
Carnes was born in Pocatello, Idaho, in 1950. His father worked for J.C. Penney.{{cite news| date= May 9, 2007| title = Obituaries| publisher = Fort Worth Star-Telegram| page = 29}} He studied piano at the Eastman School of Music.{{Cite web|url=https://barnard.edu/sites/default/files/2025-05/Mark%20Carnes%20History%20Full%20Personal%20CV%20May%202025_0.pdf|title=Mark Carnes History Full Personal CV|website=Barnard College|access-date=May 6, 2025}} At Newburgh Free Academy, he met Mary Elin Korchinsky, his partner and collaborator. They graduated in 1969 and married in 1976.{{cite web|url=https://www.recordonline.com/story/lifestyle/55-plus/2019/09/23/old-young-share-world-through/2710520007/|title=Old and young share the world through love of reading|website=Times Herald-Record|access-date=May 6, 2025}}
Carnes earned a B.A. in history in 1974. He then directed the Orange County Nutrition Program for the Elderly before enrolling in Columbia University's history program in 1976. In 1980, he was appointed Orange County Historian and became a visiting assistant professor of history at Vassar College in 1981. He earned his Ph.D. from Columbia in 1982.
Career
By the late 1990s, Carnes developed simulations to enhance engagement in his first-year seminar on great texts, which evolved into month-long games set in historical contexts such as Athens after the Peloponnesian War, Ming China, Puritan Boston, revolutionary France, and pre-independence India. This led to the development of Reacting to the Past.{{cite news|last1=Simmons| first1= Kelly|date= October 6, 2005|title=Class at UGA puts students in charge|publisher=The Atlanta Constitution|page=C1}}{{cite web|url=https://www.acenet.edu/Programs-Services/Pages/Annual-Meeting/TIAA-Institute-Theodore-M-Hesburgh-Award-for-Leadership-Excellence.aspx|title=TIAA Institute Theodore M. Hesburgh Award for Leadership Excellence in Higher Education|website=American Council on Education|access-date=May 6, 2025}}
In 2013, Carnes was named the first executive director of the Reacting Consortium. He stepped down in 2022.
In 1991, he succeeded Kenneth Jackson as executive secretary of the Society of American Historians (SAH). He became general editor of Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies (1995).{{cite book |title=Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies|editor1-first=Mark C.|editor1-last=Carnes|year=1995|edition= |isbn=9780805037593|url=https://search.worldcat.org/title/35920363}} He also edited Invisible Giants: Fifty Americans Who Shaped the Nation but Missed the History Books (2002).{{cite book |title=Invisible Giants: Fifty Americans Who Shaped the Nation but Missed the History Books|editor1-first=Mark C.|editor1-last=Carnes|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=2002|isbn=9781422356159|url=https://search.worldcat.org/title/58992631}} He resigned as executive secretary in 2009 but remained on the SAH Board.{{cite web|url=https://sah.columbia.edu/content/executive-board|title=Society of American Historians–Executive Board|website=Society of American Historians|access-date=May 6, 2025}}
Works
Early in his career, Carnes worked on editing projects, including The Compensations of War: The Diary of an Ambulance Driver during the Great War (1983){{cite book |title=The Compensations of War: The Diary of an Ambulance Driver during the Great War|editor1-first=Guy Emerson|editor1-last=Bowerman|editor2-first=Mark C.|editor2-last=Carnes|publisher=University of Texas Press|year=1983|isbn=9780292749177|url=https://search.worldcat.org/title/654152858}} and Dictionary of American Biography, Supplements 8-9 (1988), co-edited with John Garraty.{{cite book |title=Dictionary of American Biography|editor1-first=John A.|editor1-last=Garraty |editor2-first=Mark C.|editor2-last=Carnes|publisher=Charles Scribner's Sons|year=1988 |isbn=9780684186184|url=https://search.worldcat.org/title/956662764}} His first book, Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America (1989), argued that middle-class men, responding to the feminization of religion and women's predominant role in childrearing, sought refuge in fraternal organizations such as the Freemasons and Odd Fellows. These groups fostered a secret, male-exclusive culture through elaborate initiatory rituals that functioned as an alternative form of religion and family structure.{{cite journal|url=https://doi.org/10.1353/jsh/24.4.861|title=Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America. By Mark C. Carnes (New Haven, Connecticut: Yale University Press, 1989. x plus 226 pp. $27.50)|first1=Mary Ann|last1=Clawson|journal=Journal of Social History|volume=24|issue=4|pages=861–863|date=1991|doi=10.1353/jsh/24.4.861}} He also co-edited Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America (1990) with Clyde Griffen, an early work in the field of men's history.{{cite journal|url=https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1440-1754.2007.01053.x-i1|title=Book Reviews|first1=Richard|last1=McGowan|journal=The Journal of Popular Culture|volume=26|issue=1|pages=173–199|date=1992|doi=10.1111/j.1440-1754.2007.01053.x-i1}}
In 1989, the American Council of Learned Societies selected Garraty and Carnes to develop the American National Biography as a successor to the Dictionary of American Biography. Published in 1999, the 24-volume work contained 17,400 entries totaling 20 million words. The Times of London remarked, "Not since putting a man on the Moon has an American organisation undertaken such an ambitious logistical project."{{cite web|url=https://archive.org/stream/NewsUK1999UKEnglish/Apr%2008%201999%2C%20The%20Times%20%28The%20Times%29%2C%20%2366482%2C%20UK%20%28en%29_djvu.txt|title=Full text of "The Times , 1999, UK, English"|website=Internet Archive|access-date=May 6, 2025}} The American National Biography was released in both print and online formats, winning the R.R. Hawkins Award for Outstanding Scholarly Work from the Association of American Publishers (1999){{cite web|url=https://proseawards.com/winners/1999-award-winners/#body|title=R.R. Hawkins Award 1999 Winners|website=Association of American Publishers|access-date=May 6, 2025}} and the Waldo G. Leland Prize from the American Historical Association (2001).{{cite web|url=https://www.historians.org/award-grant/waldo-g-leland-prize/|title=Waldo G. Leland Prize for Reference Tools|website=American Historical Association|access-date=May 6, 2025}}
Prior to this, in 2001, Carnes published Novel History: Historians and Novelists Confront America's Past (and Each Other).{{cite journal|url=https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/107.2.502|title=Review of *Novel History: Historians and Novelists Confront America's Past (and Each Other)*, edited by Mark C. Carnes|first1=James|last1=Goodman|journal=The American Historical Review|volume=107|issue=2|pages=502–503|date=2002|doi=10.1086/ahr/107.2.502}} In 2004, he succeeded Oscar Handlin as series editor of the Library of American Biography.{{cite book |title=Will Rogers and "his" America|editor1-first=Gary Claytron|editor1-last=Anderson|editor2-first=Mark|editor2-last=Carnes|publisher=Prentice Hall, Boston|year=2011|url=https://search.worldcat.org/title/565686890}}
Carnes's Reacting to the Past games have been published as six books. In Minds on Fire: How Role-Immersion Games Transform College (2014), he argued that American colleges had long struggled to compete with subversive play worlds such as literary societies, fraternities, football culture, drinking, and video games, which absorbed students' energies.{{cite journal|url=http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/tia.17063888.0032.025|title=The Reacting to the Past Pedagogy and Engaging the First-Year Student|first1=Paula Kay|last1=Lazrus|first2=Gretchen Kreahling|last2=McKay|journal=To Improve the Academy|volume=32|issue=2013|date=2013|doi=10.3998/tia.17063888.0032.025}} He contended that intellectualized role-playing games like Reacting to the Past effectively harnessed those motivational energies.{{cite news|last1=Toppo|first1= Greg| date= March 29, 2015|title= Learning history by acting it out| publisher=News-Press|page=Z1}}
==Selected publications==
- {{cite book |title=The Compensations of War: The Diary of an Ambulance Driver during the Great War |year=1983 |isbn=978-0292710740 }}
- {{cite book |title=Secret Ritual and Manhood in Victorian America |year=1989 |isbn=978-0300051469 |last1=Carnes |first1=Mark Christopher |publisher=Yale University Press }}
- {{cite book |title=Meanings for Manhood: Constructions of Masculinity in Victorian America |year=1990 |isbn=978-0226093659 |last1=Carnes |first1=Mark C. |last2=Griffen |first2=Clyde |publisher=University of Chicago Press }}
- {{cite book |title=Past Imperfect: History According to the Movies |year=1995 |isbn=978-0805037593 }}
- {{cite book |title=Novel History: Historians and Novelists Confront America's Past (and Each Other) |year=2001 |isbn=978-0684857664 }}
- {{cite book |title=Invisible Giants: Fifty Americans Who Shaped the Nation but Missed the History Books |year=2002 |isbn=978-1422356159 |last1=Carnes |first1=Mark C. |publisher=DIANE Publishing Company }}
- {{cite book |title=The Columbia History of Post-World War II United States |year=2007 |isbn=978-0231121262 }}
- {{cite book |title=Minds on Fire: How Role-Immersion Games Transform College |year=2014 |isbn=978-0674984097 }}
- {{cite book |title=The American Nation: A History of the United States |year=2016 |isbn=9780205958504 |last1=Carnes |first1=Mark Christopher |last2=Garraty |first2=John Arthur |publisher=Pearson }}
- {{cite book |title=The Threshold of Democracy: Athens in 403 B.C |year=2022 |isbn=978-1469670751 }}
- {{cite book |title=Rousseau, Burke and Revolution in France, 1791 |year=2022 |isbn=978-1469670744 }}
- {{cite book |title=The Trial of Galileo: The "New Cosmology" Versus Aristotelianism and the Catholic Church |year=2022 |isbn=978-1469670812 }}
References
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{{Draft categories|
Category:Barnard College faculty
Category:Columbia University alumni