<p>Hello everyone, </p>
<p>I've been doing research for sometime on History PhD programs, but I wanted to know if anyone could suggest really strong East Coast historians who focus on 20th Century US race relations or cultural history? I'd pref. top 25 university recs only. </p>
<p>I'd like to start reading more books and expanding my base. </p>
<p>I'll be applying for the 2010 cycle. </p>
<p>All the best!</p>
<p>It seems like reading the literature in that field, or discussing the matter with your faculty would be more fruitful than asking here.</p>
<p>Maybe I should clarify....I've been reading kind of non-stop, but I want to know historians people have found (in that field) good to work with..or heard are nice to work with. There are some "superstars" in that field at my school...2 are amazing....1 will just steal your ideas and treats students poorly. Therefore, I'd like to not just read what impresses me, but other people I should open up to I might not know about.</p>
<p>Your request for information is a bit broad. Are you interested in race relations between minority cultures? Or, are you more interested in the interaction between Latino or Asian cultures and mainstream, white society? The list of professors that people provide will vary widely based on your specific interests.</p>
<p>Most history programs are going to have a strength in cultural history. Cultural studies and the linguistic turn are in vogue right now. I think you would be hard pressed to find a top 25 history department that doesn't have quite a few historians who use it as their primary methodology. As a literature professor of mine said, we are all investigating texts now. There has been talk, however, of a move beyond cultural studies or at least of a re-evaluation of its strengths and limitations.</p>
<p>Thank you for your response. My current research is on Jim Crow Era and Great Migration cultural history.</p>
<p>Then you should be taking a class I offer. :)</p>
<p>PM me with your email address, and I will send you a syllabus, and a brief list of essential scholars in that broad area.</p>
<p>I defer to Professor X on your specific topic. I have little knowledge of the Jim Crow era, and I'm definitely not an Americanist. </p>
<p>You might be interested in Omi and Winant's "Racial Formation in the United States," though. It covers the development of race in the United States from the 1960s - the mid-1990s. Its chapters on race theory are excellent. It is considered a classic in the field, so much so that we read it in a class on European history.</p>
<p>You might also want to try the Syllabus Finder at GMU (Center</a> for History and New Media - Syllabi). By searching for books you already found helpful, you can find syllabi on which they already appeared and thus, book lists of related books that at least one professor thought were essential to the field.</p>