Rank:

Professor

Address:

History Department (M/C 198)
University of Illinois at Chicago
601 South Morgan Street
Chicago, IL 60607-7109

Office Phone: (312) 996-3141
Direct Phone: (312) 996-8569
Fax: (312) 996-6377
Email: rjohn@uic.edu

 

Education:

• B.A. (Social Studies), magna cum laude, Harvard University, 1981
• M.A. (History), Harvard University, 1983
• Ph.D. (History of American Civilization), Harvard University, 1989

Primary Research Interests:

• U.S. Cultural and Institutional History before 1940
• American Political Development
• History of Business, Technology, and Communications

• Book:
  
  
  • Spreading the News: The American Postal System from Franklin to Morse (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995, paperback, 1998).
  
  
• Edited Volumes:
  • Ruling Passions: Political Economy in Nineteenth-Century America. University Park, Penn: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2006. Originally a special issue of the Journal of Policy History, 18 no. 1 (2006).
  • Computers and Communications Networks, special issue of the Business History Review, 75 (Spring 2001), Guest editor.
  • Managing Big Business: Essays from the Business History Review.Co-editor, with Richard S. Tedlow. Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1986.
    
  
  
• Book Series Editorships:
  • "Business, Politics, and Society," University of Pennsylvania Press (with Pamela Laird, University of Colorado at Denver, and Mark Rose, Florida Atlantic University)
  • "How Things Worked: Institutional Dimensions of the American Past," Johns Hopkins University Press (with Robin Einhorn, University of California at Berkeley)
  
  
• Articles, Essays, and Book Chapters:
  
  • "Expanding the Realm of Communications." In An Extensive Republic: Print, Culture, and Society in the New Nation, edited by Robert A. Gross and Mary Kelley. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, forthcoming.
  • "Post Office." In Encyclopedia of the New American Nation, edited by Paul Finkelman, vol. 2, pp. 575-78. Detroit: Charles Scribner's Sons, 2006.
  • "Ruling Passions: Political Economy in Nineteenth-Century America," Journal of Policy History, 18 no. 1 (2006): 1-20.
  • Patent Politics: Intellectual Property, the Railroad Industry, and the Problem of Monopoly" [with Steven W. Usselman], Journal of Policy History, 18, no. 1 (2006): 96-125.
  • "Farewell to the 'Party Period': Political Economy in Nineteenth-Century America," Journal of Policy History, 16, no. 2 (2004): 117-25.
  • "Affairs of Office: The Executive Departments, the Election of 1828, and the Making of the Democratic Party." In The Democratic Experiment: New Directions in American Political History, edited by Meg Jacobs, Wlliam Novak, and Julian Zelizer. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003, 50-84.
  • "Private Enterprise, Public Good? Communications Deregulation as a National Political Issue, 1839-1851." In Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic, edited by Jeffrey L. Pasley, Andrew W. Robertson, and David Waldstreicher. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004.
  • "Citizens, Clients, and Consumers: Rethinking the Advent of American Telecommunications," Antenna, 15 (April 2002): 6-7.
  • "Rites of Passage: Postal Petitioning as a Tool of Governance in the Age of Federalism" [with Christopher J. Young]. In The House and Senate in the 1790s: Petitioning, Lobbying, and Institutional Development, edited by Kenneth R. Bowling and Donald R. Kennon, 100-138. Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 2002.
  • "Postal Systems." In Oxford Encyclopedia of Economic History, edited by Joel Mokyr, 4:315-18. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.
  • "Telephony," and "Mail Delivery," in Encyclopedia of Chicago History, edited by James R. Grossman, Ann Durkin Keating, and Janice L. Reiff. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004.
  • "Cinderella Reigns," Reviews in American History, 29 (June 2001): 271-80. Review essay on Regina Lee Blaszczyk, Imagining Consumers: Design and Innovation from Wedgwood to Corning. Available on-line at http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/reviews_in_american_history/v029/29.2john.html
  • "Rendezvous with Information? Computers and Communications Networks in the United States," Business History Review, 75 (Spring 2001): 1-13. (This essay introduced a special issue of the Business History Review that Richard John commissioned, supervised, and edited).
  • "Contentualizing the Corporation," Journal of Policy History, 12, no. 2 (2000): 287-92. [Review of Thomas K. McCraw, Creating Modern Capitalism, Neil J. Mitchell, The Conspicuous Corporation, and William G. Roy, Socializing Capital] Available on line at: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/journal_of_policy_history/v012/12.2john.html
    
  • "Theodore N. Vail and the Civic Origins of Universal Service," Business and Economic History, 28 (Winter 1999): 71-81.
  • "Postal Systems" In International Encyclopedia of the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Vol. 17 (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2001), pp. 11834-11838.
  • "Recasting the Information Infrastructure for the Industrial Age." In A Nation Transformed by Information, edited by Alfred D. Chandler, Jr., and James Cortada, 55-105. New York: Oxford University Press, 2000.
  • "John Quincy Adams." In Reader's Companion to the American Presidency, edited by Alan Brinkley and Davis Dyer, 83-91. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2000.
  • "Le Debat sur la Telegraphie Publique aux Etas-Unis." Reseaux, 17 (1999): 391-411. In French.
  • "The Politics of Innovation," Daedalus, 127 (Fall 1998): 187-214.
  • "The Illusion of the Ordinary: John Lewis Krimmel's Village Tavern and the Democratization of Public Life in the Early Republic" [with Thomas C. Leonard], Pennsylvania History, 65 (Winter 1998): 87-96.
  • "Governmental Institutions as Agents of Change: Rethinking American Political Development in the Early Republic, 1787-1835," Studies in American Political Development, 11 (Fall 1997): 347-380.
  • "Elaborations, Revisions, Dissents: Alfred D. Chandler, Jr.'s, The Visible Hand after Twenty Years." Business History Review, 71 (Summer 1997): 151-200. (Winner of the Harvard-Newcomen Prize). Available on-line at http://www.eh.net/bhc/Exchange/RJBHR.html
  • "Leonard D. White and the Invention of American Administrative History," Reviews in American History, 24 (June 1996): 344-360.
  • "Hiland Hall's 'Report on Incendiary Publications': A Forgotten Nineteenth-Century Defense of the Constitutional Guarantee of the Freedom of the Press," American Journal of Legal History, 41 (January 1997): 94-125.
  • "William A. Davis," "Norvin Green," "Cyrus W. Field," "Abraham Bradley, Jr.," "William G. Fargo," "Hiram Sibley," "Theodore N. Vail," "James W. Hale," "James Holbrook," In American National Biography, edited by John A. Garraty. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.
  • "Eben Norton Horsford, the Northmen, and the Founding of Massachusetts," Cambridge Historical Society Proceedings, 45 (1980-1985): 117-144.
  • "The Lost World of Bartleby the Ex-Officeholder: Variations on a Venerable Literary Form," New England Quarterly, 70 (December 1997): 631-641.
  • "Like Father, Like Son: The Not-So-Strange Career of John C. Calhoun," Reviews in American History, 23 (September 1995): 438-443.
  • "American Historians and the Concept of the Communications Revolution," in Information Acumen: The Understanding and Use of Knowledge in Modern Business, edited by Lisa Bud-Frierman, 98-110. London: Routledge, 1994.
  • "Communications and Information Processing." In Encyclopedia of Social History, edited by Mary Kupiec Cayton, et al. New York: Scribner's, 1993, vol. 5, pp. 2349-2361.
  • "Election of 1824," "Election of 1828," "Albert Gallatin." In Political Parties and Elections in the United States: An Encyclopedia, edited by L. Sandy Maisel, pp. 286-288; 241. New York: Garland, 1991.
  • "Remembering McLuhan," Reviews in American History, 18 (September 1990): 419-424.
  • "Taking Sabbatarianism Seriously: The Postal System, the Sabbath, and the Transformation of American Political Culture," Journal of the Early Republic, 10 (Winter 1990): 517-567.
  • "Out of Control," Isis, 79 (December 1988) [review essay of James R. Beniger's The Control Revolution: Technological and Economic Origins of the Information Society]: 675-679.
  • "Eben Norton Horsford: Enterprising Antiquarian," Harvard Magazine, 91 (September-October 1988): 44-45.
  • "Private Mail Delivery in the United States during the Nineteenth Century--A Sketch," Business and Economic History, 2d ser. 15 (1986): 131-143.
  • "Hawthorne's Boston Custom House," Nathaniel Hawthorne Newsletter, 9 (Spring 1985): 15-17.
  
  
  
• Bibliography/Finding Aids:
  
  
  • "Archival Sources for American Postal History," Postal History Seminar Handbook, 91-147. Tucson, Az.: Postal History Foundation, 1991.
  • "Pre-1850 U.S. Postal Pamphlets and Printed Speeches," Postal History Seminar Handbook, 73-79. Tucson, Az.: Western Postal History Museum, 1989.
  • Numerous book reviews in: Journal of American History; American Historical Review; Journal of Southern History; William and Mary Quarterly; Journal of the Early Republic; Journal of Economic History; New England Quarterly; Journal of Interdisciplinary History, Technology and Culture; Business History Review; Canadian Review of American Studies; Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science; Enterprise and Society; and the Harvard Review.

Work in Progress:

"Network Nation: How Politics Shaped American Telecommunications from the War of 1812 to Bell Labs." Under contract with Harvard University Press.

Fellowships and Awards:

• Fellow, Great Cities Institute, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2004-2005
• Lloyd Lewis Fellow, Newberry Library, Chicago, 2002-2003
• Harold F. Williamson Prize for a scholar at "mid-career" who has made "significant contributions to the field of business history," Business History Conference (co-winner with Angel Kwolek-Folland), 2002
• University Scholar, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1999-2002 (the highest honor awarded to scholars at UIC)
• Visiting Professor at the Écoles des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris, spring 2001
• Rundell Lecturer, 1999, University of Maryland at College Park (invited)
• Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 1998-1999
• Vermeil Grande Prize, ITALIA '98 (for Spreading the News)
• Special award for best presentation in 1998, Chicago Philatelic Society
• Harvard-Newcomen Prize for the best essay in the Business History Review, 1997
• Finalist, Society for Historians of the Early American Republic (SHEAR) Book Prize for 1997 (for Spreading the News)
• Diane B. Boehret Award for Excellence in Philatelic Literature, 1996-1997, American Philatelic Congress (for Spreading the News)
• Gold Prize (with felicitations), PACIFIC '97 (for Spreading the News)
• Cabeen Award, Collector's Club of Chicago (best philatelic book in 1996, for Spreading the News)
• Vermeil Prize (with felicitations), CHICAGOPEX '96 (for Spreading the News)
• Vermeil Prize, SESCAL '96 (for Spreading the News)
• Institute of the Humanities Faculty Fellow, University of Illinois at Chicago, 1995-1996
• John M. Olin Faculty Fellow in Political Thought and History, 1994
• Allan Nevins Prize for the best dissertation in American history, Society of American Historians, 1990 (later published as Spreading the News)
• Herman E. Krooss Prize for the best dissertation in American business history in 1989, Business History Conference
• Delancey K. Jay Prize for the "best essay...relating to the history or development of constitutional government or free institutions" (for dissertation), 1989
• Postdoctoral Fellowship, Commonwealth Center for the Study of American History and Culture, College of William and Mary, 1989-1991
• Finalist, Ralph Gabriel Prize (best dissertation in American studies), 1989
• AAS-NEH Postdoctoral Fellowship (alternate), American Antiquarian Society, 1989-1990
• Harvard University Certificate of Distinction in Teaching, 1987
• Frances Hiatt Fellowship, American Antiquarian Society, 1986
• John E. Rovensky Fellowship in Business and Economic History, Lincoln Educational Foundation, 1984-1985
• History of American Civilization Travel Grant, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1988
• Phi Beta Kappa
• Mazur Fellowship, 1981-1983