Blake, Casey N.

Professor

Office Hours

Spring 2024: Wednesdays, 3:00 - 5:00 pm

 

Education

Ph.D. — University of Rochester, 1987
M.A. — University of Rochester, 1981
B.A. — Wesleyan University, 1978

 

Interests and Research

Casey Nelson Blake works on modern U.S. intellectual and cultural history, with an emphasis on the relationship between artistic modernism, cultural criticism and democratic citizenship.  His publications include Beloved Community:  The Cultural Criticism of Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, and Lewis Mumford, The Arts of Democracy: Art, Public Culture, and the State,  The Armory Show at 100: Modernism and Revolution and At the Center: American Thought and Culture in the Mid-Twentieth Century (co-authored with Daniel Borus and Howard Brick).  He is currently at work on a cultural biography of the writer and critic Paul Goodman.

Professor Blake came to Columbia in 1999 as founding Director of the Center for American Studies after directing American Studies programs at Indiana University and Washington University, and teaching at Reed College.  While at Columbia Professor Blake has overseen the development of a civic engagement initiative within the Center, including the “Freedom and Citizenship” program that provides humanities education and college mentoring to under-served high school students.

 

Courses

  • US Intellectual History, from 1865 to the present
  • American Cultural Criticism
  • American Radicalism
  • The American City Imagined
  • Introduction to American Studies

 

Awards

  • Faculty Service Award, Office of the Provost, Columbia University--2021
  • Fulbright Senior Lectureship in U.S. Intellectual History, University of Rome - 2006
  • National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship - 2001-02
  • Ailsa Mellon Bruce Senior Fellowship, CASVA, National Gallery of Art - 2001-02
  • OAH-Japan Short-term Exchange, Tsuda College - June-July 1999
  • Short-term Visiting Fellowship, National Museum of American Art - Summer 1996
  • Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars Fellowship - 1994-95
  • Best "Electronic Product—Humanities" for online electronic seminar, "U.S. Intellectual and Cultural History, 1890-1945," by the Association of American Publishers - 1993
  • "Outstanding Academic Book" by Choice for The Armory Show at 100 and Beloved Community: The Cultural Criticism of Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, and Lewis Mumford

 

Affiliations

  • Member, Editorial Board, Modern Intellectual History
  • Member, Executive Committee, Society for US Intellectual History
  • Editor, Co-Editor, Intellectual History Newsletter (1995-2001)
  • Member, Advisory Board, Rethinking History (1996-)
  • Member, Editorial Advisory Board, culturefront (1995-2000)
  • Member, Board of Managing Editors, American Quarterly (1994-95)
  • Associate Editor, Journal of American History (1991-93)

Publications

At the Center: American Thought and Culture in the Mid-Twentieth Century

The Armory Show at 100: Modernism and Revolution

The Arts of Democracy: Art, Public Culture, and the State

Beloved Community: The Cultural Criticism of Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, and Lewis Mumford

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