Kenneth Cmiel

{{Short description|American historian (1954–2006)}}

{{Orphan|date=May 2022}}

Kenneth J. Cmiel (August 31, 1954 – February 4, 2006) was an American academic and historian specializing in the history of human rights at the University of Iowa. He was a professor of history there, as well as the director of the university's Center for Human Rights.{{cite web|url=https://uichr.uiowa.edu/who-we-are/tributes/kenneth-j-cmiel-tribute/|title=Kenneth J. Cmiel Tribute|publisher=The University of Iowa Center for Human Rights|accessdate=June 18, 2019}}

He is the son of Henry and Jean (née Gasiorek) Cmiel. In 1980 he married Anne Duggan with whom he had three children. He graduated from Brother Rice High School, Chicago in 1972.{{Cite web|url=http://alumni.brotherrice.org/alumni/1972-2/|title = Alumni Home Page}} He died in 2006 from a previously undiagnosed brain tumor.{{cite web|url=http://collguides.lib.uiowa.edu/?RG99.0042|title=Guide to the Kenneth J. Cmiel Papers|publisher=University of Iowa|accessdate=March 27, 2016}}{{cite web|url=https://www.historians.org/publications-and-directories/perspectives-on-history/march-2006/in-memoriam-ken-cmiel|title=In Memoriam: Ken Cmiel (1954-2006)|publisher=American Historical Association|accessdate=March 27, 2016}}

He received his PhD at the University of Chicago under the direction of Neil Harris{{Citation needed|date=June 2019}}. He has published two books: Democratic Eloquence: The Fight over Popular Speech in Nineteenth-Century America (1990), which won the Allan Nevins Prize from the Society of American Historians,{{cite web|url=https://www.buffalolib.org/vufind/Record/599998/Reviews|title=Summary/Reviews: Democratic eloquence|publisher=Buffalo and Erie County Public Library|accessdate=March 27, 2016}} and A Home of Another Kind: One Chicago Orphanage and the Tangle of Child Welfare (1995). At the time of his death, he was in the process of writing a third book, to cover the origins of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

In 2020, the University of Chicago Press published Promiscuous Knowledge: Information, Image, and Other Truth Games in History, a book for which Cmiel had left behind an outline at the time of his death, and which his colleague and friend John Durham Peters finished. Cmiel and Peters are listed as co-authors of the book.{{Cite book |last=Cmiel |first=Kenneth |url=https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/P/bo45558255.html |title=Promiscuous Knowledge: Information, Image, and Other Truth Games in History |last2=Peters |first2=John Durham |publisher=University of Chicago Press |year=2020 |isbn=9780226611853 |location=Chicago}}