Visiting Professor of History
Office: 201 Carson Hall
Office Phone: (603) 646-1738
Fax: (603) 646-3353
Email: Ronald.Edsforth@Dartmouth.edu
Address:
Ron Edsforth has taught History courses at Dartmouth since 1993. In graduate school at Michigan State University Ron studied the comparative history of the industrial revolutions in Europe, North America, and Japan. For many years after receiving his PhD. in 1982, Ron’s scholarly work built the case that modern America’s political exceptionalism is rooted in the early establishment of its automobile-centered consumer economy and its exemption from the massive destruction of the World Wars. He is the author of Class Conflict and Cultural Consensus (Rutgers, 1987) and The New Deal: America’s Response to the Great Depression (Blackwell, 2000), and editor of two essay collections: Popular Culture and Political Change in Modern America (SUNY 1991) and Autowork (SUNY, 1995). He was also chief historian for the PBS documentary history of the automobile industry, America on Wheels (1996), and is currently editor for Blackwell Publishers’ book series “America’s Recent Past.”
During the last decade, Ron has developed a strong interest in the intertwined histories of world peace politics, the world wars, and economic globalization. He has taught courses on these subjects in Dartmouth’s War and Peace Studies and Masters of Liberals Arts programs, and is now Chair of Globalization Studies in the MALS program. Ron’s most recent articles have appeared in Salmagundi and Visual Resources. His next book will be a history of the world peace movement since the Hague Conference of 1899
