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Michael J. Kramer is a historian, cultural critic, and editor who teaches at the State University of New York (SUNY) Brockport. His website can be found at michaeljkramer.net.

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Michael J. Kramer is a historian, cultural critic, and editor who works primarily with modern US cultural and intellectual history as well as transnational history, public history, and digital humanities. He is the author of The Republic of Rock: Music and Citizenship in the Sixties Counterculture (Oxford University Press, 2013) and the digital exhibition The Berkeley Folk Music Festival and the Folk Music Revival on the US West Coast (July 2021). His current book project explores the 1976 US bicentennial celebrations and he is also co-editing the selected essays of countercultural social critic Theodore Roszak. Future projects focus on the relationship between folk music and technology in the United States; American experimental dance after the 1960s; the history of amateurism; the significance of arts and culture criticism in America; and US American responses to Brazilian art. He is an associate professor of history at the State University of New York (SUNY) Brockport, where he directs the SUNY HistoryLab, an effort to connect historical inquiry more robustly across SUNY campuses and with citizens and institutions in and beyond New York State. Kramer has written for numerous publications such as the New York Times, Washington Post, Salon, Newsday, New Lines, The Point, and the Society for US Intellectual History Book Review. He edits The Carryall, an online journal of US cultural and intellectual history, and blogs at Culture Rover: Promiscuous Cultural Criticism. More information about his work can be found at his website, michaeljkramer.net.

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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. 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 exhibition The Berkeley Folk Music Festival and the Folk Music Revival on the US West Coast (July 2021). He is currently working on a number of projects: a book manuscript about 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 regional experimental dance in the United States after the 1960s; the history of arts criticism in America; a history of the concept of amateurism in the US; and artistic 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 sixty years of the Brockport Writers Forum. He also founded the SUNY HistoryLab, which connects historical inquiry more robustly across SUNY campuses and to citizens and institutions in and beyond New York State. Kramer maintains a blog of cultural criticism, Culture Rover, and edits The Carryall, an online journal of US cultural and intellectual history. Kramer has received fellowships from the Newberry Library, 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, New Lines, 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 the website michaeljkramer.net.

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Creative Commons License

Culture Rover and other online materials by Michael J. Kramer are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.

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