About

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Short

Michael J. Kramer specializes in modern US cultural and intellectual history, transnational history, public history, digital humanities, and cultural criticism. He is an associate professor of history at the State University of New York (SUNY) Brockport. His website can be found at michaeljkramer.net.

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Michael J. Kramer specializes in modern US cultural and intellectual history, transnational history, public history, digital humanities, and cultural criticism. He is an associate professor of history at the State University of New York (SUNY) Brockport, the author of The Republic of Rock: Music and Citizenship in the Sixties Counterculture (Oxford University Press, 2013), and the director of the Berkeley Folk Music Festival Project, for which he created the online digital exhibition The Berkeley Folk Music Festival and the Folk Music Revival on the US West Coast—Introductory Digital Exhibition (July 2021). He is currently working on a history of the 1976 United States bicentennial celebrations; a study of the surprising relationship between folk music and technology in the US; and an edited collection of essays by the countercultural social critic Theodore Roszak. At SUNY Brockport, he directs a number of student-driven public history projects, including the Fannie Barrier Williams Project and a retrospective look at fifty years of the Writers Forum. He also directs the SUNY HistoryLab, which connects historical inquiry more robustly across SUNY campuses and to citizens of New York State. Future research explores the history of arts and culture criticism in America; 1970s experimental dance outside New York City; the history of democratic socialism in the United States prior to the rise of Bernie Sanders; the recurring presence of Abraham Lincoln in American culture; and artistic engagements with Brazil by US American artists. Kramer maintains a blog of cultural criticism, Culture Rover: Promiscuous Cultural Criticism, and edits The Carryall, an online journal of US cultural and intellectual history. More information can be found at michaeljkramer.net.

Long

Michael J. Kramer (PhD, History, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 2006) is an associate professor of history at the State University of New York (SUNY) Brockport campus. He specializes in modern US cultural and intellectual history, transnational history, public history, digital humanities, and cultural criticism. He is the author of The Republic of Rock: Music and Citizenship in the Sixties Counterculture (Oxford University Press, 2013), and the director of the Berkeley Folk Music Festival Project, for which he created the online digital exhibition The Berkeley Folk Music Festival and the Folk Music Revival on the US West Coast—Introductory Digital Exhibition (July 2021). He is currently working on a history of the 1976 United States bicentennial celebrations; a study of the surprising relationship between folk music and technology in the US; and an edited collection of essays by the countercultural social critic Theodore Roszak. Future research explores the history of arts and culture criticism in America; 1970s experimental dance outside New York City; the history of democratic socialism in the United States prior to the rise of Bernie Sanders; the recurring presence of Abraham Lincoln in American culture; and engagements with Brazil by US American artists. At SUNY Brockport, Kramer directs a number of student-driven public history projects, including the Fannie Barrier Williams Project and a retrospective look at fifty years of the Writers Forum. He also directs the SUNY HistoryLab, which connects historical inquiry more robustly across SUNY campuses and to citizens of New York State. Kramer maintains a blog of cultural criticism, Culture Rover: Promiscuous Cultural Criticism, and edits The Carryall, an online journal of US cultural and intellectual history. Kramer has received fellowships from the Getty Research Institute, the Kluge Center at the Library of Congress, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Woody Guthrie Center/BMI Foundation, the Music Library Association, the Society for American Music, SF Heritage, the Mellon Foundation-funded Digital Ethnic Futures Consortium, and the Southern Folklife Collection at University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill’s Wilson Library. He has written for publications such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Salon, First of the Month, The National Memo, The Point, Theater, Newsday, Afterimage, Clio & the Contemporary, History@Work, and the Society for US Intellectual History Book Review. He has a background in journalism, museum work, and dance and theater dramaturgy. More information about his work can be found at michaeljkramer.net.

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