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Dorothy Ross  Arthur O. Lovejoy Professor of HistoryAmerican intellectual history, modern social and political thought, history of the human sciences Board of editors of Modern Intellectual History The Johns Hopkins University Office Hours: Monday 2-4pm I graduated from Smith College and received a Ph.D. degree in history from Columbia University in 1965. After an interim period of short-term appointments and child-rearing, I taught at Princeton University from 1972-76 and at the University of Virginia from 1978-1990, when I came to Hopkins as Arthur O. Lovejoy Professor of History. My field is American intellectual history and my research has been largely in social and political thought, in particular, the history of the social and behavioral sciences and of historical consciousness. My first book, G. Stanley Hall: The Psychologist as Prophet (1972) was an intellectual biography of the pioneer psychologist who brought Freud to America in 1909. My major work, The Origins of American Social Science (1991), traces the development of American economics, sociology, and political science from the late eighteenth century to 1929. It links the scientistic and liberal character of these disciplines to their grounding in the nationalist ideology of American exceptionalism, the idea that American history is set on a millennial course, exempt from real historical change. I examined the background of these intersecting political and historical ideas in several articles: "Socialism and American Liberalism"; "The Liberal Tradition Revisited and the Republican Tradition Addressed"; and "Historical Consciousness in Nineteenth Century America" (see cv). More recently, I have explored the modernist dimension of the social sciences as editor of Modernist Impulses in the Human Sciences, 1870-1930 (1994); the role of gender, in "Gendered Social Knowledge"; and the nationalist historical consciousness basic to American historiography in "Grand Narrative in American Historical Writing" (cv). I am currently completing an editorial project with Theodore M. Porter, a 300,000 word volume on the history of the modern social sciences worldwide for the new Cambridge History of Science, 8 vols., a project that has renewed my interest in psychology and anthropology and taken me more deeply into comparative perspectives on the human sciences. My next book is rather different; it will take a larger look at the ethical underpinnings of American social and political thought. Focused on the conceptions of social responsibility at work in four major public policy debates starting with Reconstruction, the book is a vehicle for reexamining the liberal reform tradition in modern America. I regularly direct graduate students in both intellectual and cultural history, and my seminar includes both classic texts in intellectual history and new, related works in cultural history. I also give a seminar in the new history of the human sciences and give fields as well in American political culture. I teach a variety of courses in intellectual history at the undergraduate level and an introductory course that explores the themes of individualism and community. I have maintained an active role in a variety of professional associations and serve on several editorial boards. Among my professional credits are fellowships from the National Science Foundation, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, and a Spencer Foundation Mentor Award. From 1993-1996 I was Chair of the department.
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