Jeffrey H. Bloodworth

  • Professor
    History Program
  • Program Director
    Public Service & Global Affair
  • Professor
    Honors Program

Hi. I'm Jeff Bloodworth.

I teach modern American political history and genocide studies. I terms of the former, I teach courses on the 1960s, presidential & congressional elections, post-1945 America. For the latter, I teach comparative genocide and a class on the Holocaust. To complement these classes, I have led student trips to Washington, D.C., Philadelphia, New York City, the FDR Library, London, Prague, Berlin, Copenhagen, the Middle East, Poland, Bosnia, Croatia, Hungary, and more. PSA majors travel and see the world !! I get to write about American politics, teach about weighty topics, and travel the globe. I really do have the best job in the world.

My research specialty centers on contemporary United States Political history. My book, Losing the Center: A History of American Liberalism, 1968-1992 was published in 2013. Currently, I am midway through a biography on the former Speaker of the House, Carl Albert. Majority Leader & Speaker during the Kennedy, LBJ, Nixon, and Ford presidencies, Albert was at the center of the political action during a decisive, heroic, and tumultuous era. I am using Albert as a vehicle to explore the history of mid-century American liberalism. If I am an expert on anything, America liberalism is my area of knowledge. In addition to political history, I also dabble in genocide studies. My two travel classes involve studying genocide, human rights, the Holocaust, and the Bosnian genocide. In one class, conclude the course with at trip to Poland where we tour death camps, meet with survivors, and engage with all sort of learning and service. In the other course, we travel to central Europe and the Balkans where study pre-and-post-Holocaust Jewish life and pre-and-post-genocide Bosnia.

Gannon is located right on the Lake Erie (well, about 1/2 mile from it) in Erie, Pennsylvania. For its size Erie has quite a bit of diversity. From Iraqi and Bosnian refugees to Sudanese and Burundians, not to mention the Poles and Slovaks, Erie boasts thousands of citizens from all corners of the globe. I have lived in Erie for 15 years and have come to love this city and region. In my spare time, I bike (the kind you pedal not the atrocious noise pollution machines) like a madman, follow my beloved St. Louis Cardinals, enjoy a good IPA, and hang out with my superstar wife (the plastic pollution scholar, Sam Mason), and puppy, Tupelo. I also love to travel and greatly enjoy introducing that love to my students. So, get your passport and prepare to go places with one of my classes!


 

HONORS & AWARDS
 

Yad Vashem Cornell Seminar 2024

 Holocaust Educational Foundation: “Borders/Borderlands and the Holocaust, 2024

 Carl Albert Research Grant, 2023

 Jack Miller Center Fellowship, 2022

 Holocaust Education Foundation, Spaces and Places of the Holocaust Seminar, 2022

Keene State University Summer Institute on Holocaust & Genocide Studies, 2021

Dwight D. Eisenhower Foundation Research Grant, 2020

Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation Research Grant, 2020

Gerald R. Ford Foundation Research Grant, 2020

State Historical Society of Iowa Research Grant, 2020-2021

Carl Albert Center Visiting Scholar, 2020

Jefferson Education Society Civic Leadership Academy, 2019

Summer University Srebrenica, 2019

Dirksen Center Congressional Research Grant, 2019

Excellence in Undergraduate Advising, 2018

Excellence in Teaching Award, Gannon University Student Government Association, 2017

Taube Center’s Seminar on Wheels: Exploring Poland Heritage Study Tour Summer, 2016

Auschwitz-Jewish Center Faculty Fellow, 2015

Auschwitz-Jewish Center Faculty Fellow, 2015

U.S. Holocaust Museum Silberman Seminar Fellow, 2015

Holocaust Education Foundation Teaching Grant, 2015

Gannon Barker Globalization Grant, 2014-2015

GIFT Grant: Gannon Inspired Faculty-Led Trips, 2015

Excellence in Undergraduate Advising Award, Gannon University 2014

Bordin Gillette Researcher Travel Fellowship, 2013 (University of Michigan)

United States Holocaust Museum Hess Seminar Follow-Up Grant, 2013

The Moakley Archive & Institute Travel Grant (Suffolk University), 2013

William Jennings Bryan Dorn Research Award (University of South Carolina), 2013

Council of Independent Colleges “Gilded Age” Seminar, 2013

W.R. Poage Legislative Library Special Collections Grant (Baylor University), 2013

Harry S Truman Presidential Library Grant, 2012

Carl Albert Center Visiting Scholar Grant, 2012

Witherspoon Institute’s Church & State Seminar, 2012

Rumi Forum’s Central Asia Security Seminar, 2011

Maroon Award, Gannon University 2009-2010

State Historical Society of Iowa Research Grant, 2009-2010

Holocaust Education Foundation’s Summer Institute on the Holocaust & Jewish Civilization, 2009

Excellence in Undergraduate Advising Award, Gannon University 2009

Outcomes Achievement Award, Gannon University, 2009

CETL Instructional Innovation with Technology Grant, 2009

United States Holocaust Museum’s 2009 Jack and Anita Hess Seminar for Faculty

Schusterman Center for Israeli Studies Fellowship, 2008

Duratz Undergraduate Research Fellowship, Faculty Advisor

Gannon University Faculty Development Grant, 2008

Truman National Security Project Fellowship, 2008, 2009, & 2010

University of Heidelberg’s Marie Curie Series of Events Fellowship, 2007

Foundation for the Defense of Democracies Fellow, 2007

Carl Albert Center Visiting Scholar Grant, 2007

Newman University Faculty Scholarship and Publication Award, 2006-2007

Newman University Faculty Development Fund, 2007

Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society, 2006

Ohio University John C. Baker Peace Fellow, 2005-2006

John F. Kennedy Foundation Research Fellowship Grant, 2005

Lyndon Baines Johnson Foundation Research Grant, 2004

Gerald R. Ford Foundation Research Grant, 2004

Contemporary History Institute Research and Travel Grant, 2004, 2005, 2006

Outstanding Teacher of Record, History Department, Ohio University, 2003

Contemporary History Institute Fellowship (2), Ohio University, 2000-2001; 2003-2004

Teaching Assistantship, Ohio University, 2002-2003

Joann and Basil Boritzki Award for Outstanding Graduate Student, Missouri State

University, 1998

Teaching Assistantship, Missouri State University, 1997-1999

  • Road to the White House
  • Road to the Congress
  • The Age of Genocide
  • Good & Evil: Theology, God, & the Holocaust (travel class to Poland)
  • Senior Seminar
  • The 1960s
  • Contemporary US History
  • US History to 1865
  • US History 1865-Present
  • History Without Borders
  • Ph.D., History, Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, 2006
  • Certificate in Contemporary History, Nordic Summer School, University of Copenhagen, 2005
  • Certificate in Contemporary History, Contemporary History Institute, Ohio University, 2001
  • M.A., History, Missouri State University, Springfield, Missouri 1999
  • B.A., History (cum laude), Missouri State University, Springfield, Missouri 1996
  • Gannon University (Erie, Pennsylvania)
  • Co-Director, School of Public Service & Global Affairs, 2018-Present
  • Department Chair, 2011-Present
  • Associate Professor of History, 2011-Present
  • Assistant Professor of History, 2007-2011
  • Program Director, 2008-Present
  • Newman University (Wichita, Kansas)
  • Assistant Professor of History, 2006-2007


  • Truman National Security Project Associate
  • Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations
  • Book
  • Losing the Center: A History of American Liberalism, 1968-1980, University of Kentucky Press, 2014.
  • Heartland Liberal: The Life & Times of Speaker Carl Albert, University of Oklahoma Press, 2022
  • Articles
    “Scoop Jackson’s Liberal Internationalism: Senator Henry Jackson, the Solzhenitsyn Affair, and the Politics of Human Rights,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly, pp. 69–77, spring 2006.

    “Donald Peterson, New Politics Liberalism, and the Revival of Wisconsin’s Insurgent Progressive Tradition,” The Wisconsin Magazine of History, pp. 2–11, winter 2007.

    “The Program for Better Jobs and Income: Welfare Policy, Liberalism, and the Failed
    Presidency of Jimmy Carter,” The International Social Science Review, pp. 135–150, spring 2007.

    “From Progressive to Liberal Internationalism: Carl Albert, Helen Douglas, and the Making of a Postwar Consensus,” The Journal of the Historical Society, pp. 493–514, December 2009.

  • “For Love or for Money?: William McKinley and the Spanish-American War,” The Journal of White House Studies, pp.79–101, spring 2010.
    “Fred Harris’s New Populism and the Demise of Heartland Liberalism,” The Chronicles of Oklahoma, pp. 196–221, fall 2010.

    The (Heterodox) Left at Peace: Or, Breaking Up is Hard to Do, The Journal of Politics and Culture, THE LEFT AT WAR WITH ITSELF: A Special Double-Issue Devoted to Discussing Michael Bérubé's "The Left At War" & the Questions it Raises (Guest-Edited by Gabriel Noah Brahm & Gregory J. Lobo) Edition 2010 Issues 3 & 4,
    http://www.politicsandculture.org/2010/12/30/the-heterodox-left-at-peace-or-breaking-up-is-hard-to-do/

    “Benjamin Franklin Tillinghast & the Iowa Russian Famine Relief,” The Historian, pp. 480–502, Fall 2011.

    “Humanitarian Intervention: The American Experience from William McKinley to Barack Obama,” Origins, June 2012, volume 5 issue 9, http://ehistory.osu.edu/osu/origins/article.cfm?articleid=69

    “Obama: Urban Liberalism’s Ascent,” in Politics Symposium: President Obama’s Legacy & Record, Political Science & Politics, January 2017, pp.1-5, January 2017.

    “The Local is Global: Philadelphia’s Weatherwomen Bring the War Home to Pennsylvania,” Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies, Vol. 86, No. 4, Fall 2019, p. 511-537.

    “The Democratic Party and US Foreign Relations.” In Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. Oxford University Press. Article published February 2020. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199329175.013.754.

    Chapters in Edited Books
    “Jimmy Carter’s 1976 Presidential Campaign: The Saint, the Sinner, and the Hopeless Dreamer,” in A Companion to Jimmy Carter, Hoboken, New Jersey: Wiley-Blackwell, 2013, pp. 229-250.

    “Teaching Pluralism Via the Arab-Israeli Conflict,” in Teaching the Arab-Israeli Conflict in the College Classroom, ed. Rachel S. Harris, Wayne State University Press, 2017, pp. 258-265.

    “The Little Guy for the Little Guy: 1969 Minneapolis and the White Working Class Revolt,” in The Last Battleground: Conservatism in the Postwar Midwest, ed. Jon Lauck and Catherine Stock, (Lawrence, Kansas: Kansas University Press, 2020), pp. 171-186.

    “Populism, Monopoly, & the Urban Liberal-Rural Populist Coalition,” Mapping Populism, ed. Majia Nadeson and Amit Ron, (New York: Routledge 2020), pp. 113-123.
  • Heartland Liberal: The Life & Times of Carl Albert, Under review with the University of Oklahoma Press, (In progress)
  • From Rural Populism to Urban Liberalism, Under contract with the Edwin Mellen Press, (In progress
  • Articles
  • “Scoop Jackson’s Liberal Internationalism: Senator Henry Jackson, the Solzhenitsyn Affair, and the Politics of Human Rights,” Pacific Northwest Quarterly, pp. 69–77, spring 2006.
  • “Donald Peterson, New Politics Liberalism, and the Revival of Wisconsin’s Insurgent Progressive Tradition,” The Wisconsin Magazine of History, pp. 2–11, winter 2007.

  • “The Program for Better Jobs and Income: Welfare Policy, Liberalism, and the Failed
    Presidency of Jimmy Carter,” The International Social Science Review, pp. 135–150, spring 2007.

  • “From Progressive to Liberal Internationalism: Carl Albert, Helen Douglas, and the Making of a Postwar Consensus,” The Journal of the Historical Society, pp. 493–514, December 2009.
  • “For Love or for Money?: William McKinley and the Spanish-American War,” The Journal of White House Studies, pp.79–101, spring 2010.
  • “Fred Harris’s New Populism and the Demise of Heartland Liberalism,” The Chronicles of Oklahoma, pp. 196–221, fall 2010.
  • The (Heterodox) Left at Peace: Or, Breaking Up is Hard to Do, The Journal of Politics and Culture, THE LEFT AT WAR WITH ITSELF: A Special Double-Issue Devoted to Discussing Michael Bérubé's "The Left At War" & the Questions it Raises (Guest-Edited by Gabriel Noah Brahm & Gregory J. Lobo) Edition 2010 Issues 3 & 4
    http://www.politicsandculture.org/2010/12/30/the-heterodox-left-at-peace-or-breaking-up-is-hard-to-do/
  • “Benjamin Franklin Tillinghast & the Iowa Russian Famine Relief,” The Historian, pp. 480–502, Fall 2011.
  • Essays
    “A Democratic GUT-Check: A Grand Unifying Theory of Democratic Victories, History News Network, October 20, 2019, http://hnn.us/article/173350.

      “Listen Democrats: You Won’t Win by Leaping Leftward,” History News Network, 
    November 19, 2017, http://historynewsnetwork.org/article/167275.

    “The Long Game: Why the Extension of Nuclear Talks With Iran is a Good Thing,” Just Security, November 25, 2014, http://justsecurity.org/17803/long-game-extension-iran-nuclear-talks-good/#.VHUWlzRNJCg.facebook.

    “I Was An Intern For Todd Akin, And I Know All Too Well That He is Too Radical For Missouri,” November 1, 2012, Policymic.com, https://mic.com/articles/17896/i-was-an-intern-for-todd-akin-and-i-know-all-too-well-that-he-is-too-radical-for-missouri#.HznPhCZbF
     
    “A Postcard from the Middle East: A Suggestion for Obama’s New Beginning,” May 23, 2011, The Progressive Fix, http://progressivepolicy.org/tag/jeff-bloodworth-2.

    “Why Progressives Must Embrace the Robust Optimism of “American Exceptionalism,” The Progressive Fix, August 13, 2010, http://www.progressivefix.com/why-progressives-must-embrace-the-robust-optimism-of-%E2%80%9Camerican-exceptionalism%E2%80%9D

    “History Does Not Repeat Itself — It Doesn’t Even Rhyme,” The Progressive Fix, July 29, 2010, www.progressivefix.com/history-does-not-repeat-itself-it-doesn%E2%80%99t-even-rhyme.

    “The Homer Doctrine,” Good.is, Canapés & Kalashnikovs, September 10, 2009
    http://www.good.is/post/the-homer-doctrine.

    “Barack Obama’s Working Class Foreign Policy,” With All Our Might, Progressive Policy Institute (Washington, D.C.), October 13, 2008. http://www.allourmight.com/?p=173.


Academic Presentations
Don’t Fall Jimmy! The Poverty of Welfare Policy in the Carter Administration. Mid-America Conference on History, Fayetteville, Arkansas, September 2002.

New Politics Liberals and the 1968 Election. Mid-America Conference on History, Springfield, Missouri, September 2004.

Everybody Loves Jimmy: Jimmy Carter, Welfare Reform, and Liberalism during the 1970s. War on Poverty Seminar, Eastern Kentucky University, Richmond, Kentucky, March 2005.

Donald O. Peterson, Eugene McCarthy, and the 1968 Election. Midwest Political Science Association Conference, Chicago, Illinois, March 2005.

Human Rights and Peace Activism. Peace, Conflict Solution and International Organizations and Conventions in the 20th Century, Copenhagen, Denmark, August 20, 2005. 
  
Henry Jackson and the Liberal International Tradition. The Nobel Institute’s Forum on Contemporary History, Oslo, Norway, August 23, 2005.

Congressman Harold Ford, Sr. and the Demise of Southern Liberalism. The Tennessee Conference on History, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, September 10, 2005.

Ben Wattenberg, the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, and the Demise of the Anti-Totalitarian Left. Mid-America Conference on History, Lawrence, Kansas, September 22, 2005.

No More Vietnams: The Rise of Ronald Reagan’s Neo-Conservatives. The University of Oxford Rothermere American Institute’s: The United States in the 1980s: The Reagan Years. Oxford, United Kingdom, November 10, 2005.

The Politics of Human Rights. The Center for the Study of History and Memory’s History of Human Rights Workshop. Bloomington, Indiana, March 8-9, 2006.

Welfare Policy During the 1970s. The 2006 Policy History Conference. University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Virginia. June 2, 2006.

Fred Harris and the Demise of Liberal Populism. The 2006 Mid-America Conference on History. University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas, September 22, 2006.

The Demise of Ronald Reagan’s Conservative Coalition. The United States and Iraq: Reflections and Projections Conference, University College-Dublin, Dublin, Ireland, November 25, 2006.

Post-1945 American Politics, Commentator, Ohio Academy of History, Otterbein College, March 29, 2007

Toward A Reaganite Foreign Policy, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, Washington, D.C. June 21, 2007.

New Politics Liberals, 1968, and the Right’s New Patriotism, The Establishment Responds, The Institutional and Social Impact of Protest Movements During and After the Cold War, University of Heidelberg (Germany), November 21, 2007.

The New Politics and National Greatness Liberalism, Legacy of 1968, Chestnut Hill College, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, April 1, 2008.

1968, National Greatness, and the Transformation of American Liberalism, The University of Oxford Rothermere American Institute’s 1968: American Politics, Culture and Society in a Year of Upheaval. Oxford, United Kingdom, May 12, 2008.

“Scaring the Shit Out of Honky America: the Weather Underground, the Transnational Global Left and the Travails of ‘Enlightenment’ Cosmopolitanism,” The Nordic Association for American Studies Conference, the University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark. May 20, 2008.

“The Weather Underground,” Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations 2009 Conference, Falls Church, Virginia. June 20, 2009.

“The Weather Underground,” U.S. Intellectual History Conference, October, 2010, New York City.

(Commentator) “Your Doin’ a Heck of a Job Brownie: The Conservative State and Natural Disasters,” U.S. Intellectual History Conference October, 2010, New York City.

“Grand Strategy,” (Moderator) Truman National Security Project, Washington, D.C. January, 15, 2010.

“National Service” Roundtable, Progressive Policy Institute, Washington, D.C., October 12, 2010.

“Lindy Boggs: Race, Gender, and 1984,” Court House, State House, Her House: Southern Women and Politics, University of Southern Mississippi, Biloxi, Mississippi March 31, 2011.

“The New Politics: How the Sixties Turned Middle America Red,”
University of Warsaw's "The 1960s in America: Legacies," University of Warsaw’s Center for American Studies, Warsaw, Poland, May 11, 2012.

“Reform Democrats & the New Politics,” British Association of American Studies, Exeter University, Exeter, England, April 2013.

“Teaching the Holocaust,” United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C., June 2013.

(Chair), “Rhetoric & Advertising in the Public Sphere, (Undergraduate) Pennsylvania Communication Association Annual Conference, October 19, 2013.

“Loser History: Liberalism During the Wilderness Years,” Pennsylvania Communication Association Annual Conference, October 19, 2013.

“Carl Albert: Bridging the Rural Populist-Urban Liberal Divide,” Policy History Conference, June 4, 2014, Columbus, Ohio.

“Reexamining the Great Society: Origins & Policy,” (Commentator), Policy History Conference, June 4, 2014, Columbus, Ohio.

“The Middle Way: J. William Fulbright’s Liberal Internationalism,” J. William Fulbright in International Perspective: Liberal Internationalism and U.S. Global Influence, September 1-2, 2015, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, Arkansas.      

“Deadly Medicine: The Nazi Context,” Keynote Lecture for Deadly Medicine Exhibit, October 8, 2015, Gannon University.

“Race Matters: Voting Rights & Majority-Minority Redistricting,” Voting Rights Act @ 50: A Symposium, Utica College, November 14, 2015.

“Writing Genocide,” 2016 AHA Workshop on Undergraduate Teaching: Assignments Charrette, Atlanta, Georgia, January 8, 2016.

“Teaching Genocide,” 2016 CHESS Conference, February 3, 2016.

“Barack Obama: Urban Liberalism’s Ascent,” The Barack Obama Legacy & Record, Mt. Union College, March 11, 2016.

“Carl Albert & the Art of Biography,” Conference on Biography Writing, SUNY-Fredonia, April 8, 2016.

“Auschwitz Jewish Center,” Taube Center’s Seminar on Wheels, August 11, 2016.

“It’s Complicated: The Limits of Voting Rights in Redressing Political Violence & Inequality, Large-Scale Violence and Its Aftermaths,” 2017 Kean University Summer Institute, Union, New Jersey, June 25-29, 2017.

(Commentator), "A Little Way Up North: Southern Politics and the Nation’s Capital," 2017 Southern Historical Association, Dallas, Texas, November 10, 2017.

“Monopoly and the Making of the Rural-Populist Urban Liberal Coalition,” New Directions in the Study of Populism, Arizona State University, March 17, 2018.

(Participant) New Directions in the Study of Populism Workshop, Arizona State University, March 15-17, 2018.

“Know-Nothing Curmudgeons: 1968, Charlie Stenvig, and the Roots of Donald Trump,” 2018 Ohio Valley Conference on History, University of Tennessee-Martin, October 19, 2018.

(Commentator) “The 1960s and the Cold War,” 2018 Ohio Valley Conference on History, University of Tennessee-Martin, October 19, 2018.

“Weatherwomen & the Global 1960s,” Global Sixties: Transnational Connectivity and Global Consciousness, Institute of Global Studies, Shanghai University, November 30, 2018.

“The Politician, the Activist, & The Writer: Right(s) for Our Time” The Humanities & the Future Symposium: "Humanities & Democracy." Missouri Humanities Symposium, Drury University, March 22, 2019.

“Rural Populism after the New Deal,” Populism and Recovery of the Intellectual Virtues Workshop, South Dakota State University, Brookings, South Dakota State University, September 25-27, 2019.

Jeffrey         H. Bloodworth

+1 8148715768
Office: PC 3218

Contact Jeffrey Bloodworth