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T. J. Jackson Lears

T. J. Jackson Lears (born 1947) is an American cultural and intellectual historian with interests in comparative religious history, literature and the visual arts, folklore and folk beliefs. He has taught at Rutgers University since 1986 and currently serves as the Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of History.

"It may seem unlikely that there is still something original to say about deep America; so many brilliant minds, starting with Tocqueville, have been at work deciphering the paradoxes of our all too mythic, all too preponderant country. But if anyone can, it is likely to be the author of Something for Nothing. No one is thinking with more spiritedness and subtlety about the roots (and ethical tangle) of American culture and the distinctive American pursuit of happiness than Jackson Lears," Susan Sontag wrote in 2003.Susan Sontag, endorsement for Jackson Lears, Something for Nothing:

:Luck in America New York: Viking Press, 2003, p. ii.

Life

Lears grew up in Annapolis, Maryland.{{Cite web |last=Conservative |first=The American |last2=Caldwell |first2=Christopher |date=2024-11-26 |title=A Student of the American Character |url=https://www.theamericanconservative.com/a-student-of-the-american-character/ |access-date=2025-01-30 |website=The American Conservative |language=en-US}} During the Vietnam War, Lears worked with the Navy as a cryptographer. After he left the Navy, he taught at a school for girls in the Virginia juvenile court system.{{Cite web |date=2024-10-29 |title=U. professor questions modernity in newly published book, collection of essays |url=https://www.dailytargum.com/article/u-professor-questions-modernity-in-newly-published-book-collection-of-essays-20241029 |access-date=2025-01-30 |website=The Daily Targum |language=en}} Lears was educated at the University of Virginia, the University of North Carolina, and Yale University, where he received a Ph.D. in American Studies.{{Cite web |last=Cullen |first=Jim |date=2024-07-25 |title=REVIEW: The Iconoclast |url=https://currentpub.com/2024/07/25/review-the-iconoclast/ |access-date=2025-01-30 |website=Current |language=en-US}}

He has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Rockefeller Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Winterthur Museum, the Smithsonian Institution, and the Shelby Cullom Davis Center at Princeton University.{{Cite web |date=2025-01-30 |title=T.J. Jackson Lears {{!}} American Academy of Arts and Sciences |url=https://www.amacad.org/person/tj-jackson-lears |access-date=2025-01-30 |website=www.amacad.org |language=en}} In October 2003 he received the Public Humanities Award from the New Jersey Council for the Humanities, and in 2009 he was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.{{Cite web |title=Presidential Misconduct |url=https://www.centeronnationalsecurity.org/presidential-misconduct-the-long-view |access-date=2025-01-30 |website=Center on National Security |language=en-US}}

Lears is the editor-in-chief of the Raritan Quarterly Review. He has been a regular contributor to The New Republic, The Nation, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and other publications.{{Cite journal |last=Lears |first=Jackson |date=2019-05-04 |title=Art for Life’s Sake: Craft and the Quest for Wholeness in American Culture |url=https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/17496772.2019.1620435 |journal=The Journal of Modern Craft |volume=12 |issue=2 |pages=161–172 |doi=10.1080/17496772.2019.1620435 |issn=1749-6772|url-access=subscription }} He has also written essays and reviews in The New York Times, The Nation, The New York Review of Books, the London Review of Books, The New Republic, and other magazines. He has taught at Yale University, the University of Missouri, and New York University.

Books

Articles

  • Jackson Lears, "Imperial Exceptionalism" (review of Victor Bulmer-Thomas, Empire in Retreat: The Past, Present, and Future of the United States, Yale University Press, 2018, {{ISBN|978-0-300-21000-2}}, 459 pp.; and David C. Hendrickson, Republic in Peril: American Empire and the Liberal Tradition, Oxford University Press, 2017, {{ISBN|978-0190660383}}, 287 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXVI, no. 2 (February 7, 2019), pp. 8-10.
  • Jackson Lears, "The Forgotten Crime of War Itself" (review of Samuel Moyn, Humane: How the United States Abandoned Peace and Reinvented War, Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2021, 400 pp.), The New York Review of Books, vol. LXIX, no. 7 (April 21, 2022), pp. 40–42. "After September 11 [2001] no politician asked whether the proper response to a terrorist attack should be a US war or an international police action. [...] Debating torture or other abuses, while indisputably valuable, has diverted Americans from 'deliberating on the deeper choice they were making to ignore constraints on starting war in the first place.' [W]ar itself causes far more suffering than violations of its rules." (p. 40.)

References

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External links

  • [http://history.rutgers.edu/faculty-directory/professors/187-lears-tj-jackson Jackson Lears], faculty page, Rutgers University
  • [https://query.nytimes.com/search/query?frow=0&n=10&srcht=s&query=&srchst=nyt&submit.x=21&submit.y=7&submit=sub&hdlquery=&bylquery=jackson+lears&daterange=full&mon1=01&day1=01&year1=1981&mon2=05&day2=11&year2=2008 Articles by Jackson Lears] in The New York Times
  • [https://www.thenation.com/authors/jackson-lears/ Articles by Jackson Lears] in The Nation
  • [http://www.lrb.co.uk/contributors/jackson-lears Articles by Jackson Lears] in The London Review of Books
  • [https://newrepublic.com/authors/jackson-lears Articles by Jackson Lears] in The New Republic

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Category:1947 births

Category:Living people

Category:Rutgers University faculty

Category:University of Virginia alumni

Category:University of North Carolina alumni

Category:Yale University alumni