Daniel J. Czitrom

Professor of History

Specialization
American cultural and political history; history of New York City; American media history

Daniel Czitrom's research and writing focuses on recent American cultural and political history. He has written extensively on the history of American mass media and popular culture, as well as the history of New York City. In 2008, the New Press published his latest book Rediscovering Jacob Riis: Exposure Journalism and Photography in Turn of the Century New York (with Bonnie Yochelson). Supported by a Collaborative Research Grant from National Endowment for the Humanities, the book offers the first in-depth study of Riis's pioneering documentary photography, as well as a critical reevaluation Riis's career as a social reformer and journalist.  The book received extensive coverage from the national press, including four pieces in the New York Times: a Sunday Times review by Matthew Power, an Editorial Observer essay by Verlyn Klinkenborg, a review by Sewell Chan, and a Reading New York appraisal by Sam Roberts (please see links to these stories below). The book was the focus of a feature story by Robert Siegel that aired on National Public Radio’s All Things Considered. Reviews of Rediscovering Jacob Riis have also appeared in the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, and many other venues.

Czitrom was awarded a 2005-6 faculty fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities for his current book project, Mysteries of the City: Politics, Culture, And New York’s Underworld in Turn of the Century America. The book examines the origins, revelations, and legacies of the explosive 1894 Lexow Committee inquiry into the New York Police Department. This sensational investigation revealed how the struggle to control the city’s underworld shaped both metropolitan politics and New York’s increasingly uneasy relationship to the nation. The story illuminates a cluster of related themes: the persistent anti-urbanism in American culture; the contested meanings of the police power; the bi-partisan reality of machine politics; the genesis of muckraking and Progressivism; and the origins of the welfare state.

Czitorm's first book Media and the American Mind: From Morse to McLuhan (North Carolina, 1982) received the First Books Award from the American Historical Association and has been translated into Chinese and Spanish. To mark the book’s twenty-fifth anniversary, the journal Critical Studies in Media Communication published a special symposium assessing its long range impact on media studies and media history. Czitrom is co-author of Out of Many: A History of the American People (6th ed., Pearson Prentice Hall, 2009), one of the best selling college textbooks for U.S. history. In 2005 he was elected to the Executive Board of the Organization of American Historians (OAH). He has also been named an OAH Distinguished Lecturer for 2006-2009. Czitrom also serves on the Executive Committee of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA), housed at New York University’s Tamiment Library, representing  the world’s largest collection of historical sources documenting the American involvement with the Spanish Civil War.

Czitrom has co-authored two historical dramas, both based on his published writing. “There is a creative aspect to history,” he says, “especially when the gaps in the sources require greater speculation. And since historians are bound by rules of evidence, I find that historical drama offers an alternative way to represent the past and to try to find historical truths.” In 2003, Red Bessie, a play co-written with Sarasota-based playwright Jack Gilhooley, was produced at the Edinburgh Fringe, the largest arts festival in the world. Red Bessie explores the arc of American radicalism from the Spanish Civil War in the 1930s to the McCarthyite repression of the 1950s. The play ran for twenty-five performances in Edinburgh, receiving glowing reviews from critics and an enthusiastic response from audiences. The Times Literary Supplement described Red Bessie as "clearheaded and humane, and more fun than might be expected of such a high-minded project."

Czitrom's first play, Big Tim and Fanny (also co-authored with Jack Gilhooley), dramatized and world of Timothy D. “Big Tim” Sullivan, a larger than life Tammany Hall politician in turn of the century New York, who forged a unique alliance with the young social reformer, Frances Perkins (MHC 1902) in the aftermath of the disastrous 1911 Triangle Fire. The play had its world premiere in a 1992 production mounted by the MHC Theatre Arts department. Both plays have also received staged readings at the New Dramatists in New York City.

Czitrom, who was born and raised in the Bronx, has worked as a consultant for several recent historical documentaries. He served as featured on-camera commentator and historical adviser for New York, the seven-episode PBS series, directed by Ric Burns and broadcast in 1999 and 2002. Czitrom contributed the essay "The Secrets of the Great City," to New York: An Illustrated History (Alfred A. Knopf, 1999), a companion book to the TV series. He has also served as featured on-camera commentator and historical adviser for several other PBS projects, including American Photography: A Century of Images (1999), Slumming It: Myth and Culture on the Bowery (2001), The Great Transatlantic Cable (2005), and Currier & Ives: Images of America (2007).

At Mount Holyoke, Czitrom regularly teaches The American Peoples Since 1865; ‘We Didn't Start the Fire’: The United States Since 1945; Reading the New York Times: Journalism, Power, History; New York City: Capitol of the Twentieth Century; and The 1960s as History and Myth, among other courses.

News Links:

"Jacob Riis: Shedding Light On NYC's 'Other Half," NPR, June 30, 2008

"The Other Half," NYT Book Review, May 25, 2008

"Witness to the Poor, and a Grand Ship Undone," Sam Roberts, New York Times, March 9, 2008

"Revisiting the Other Half of Jacob Riis," Sewell Chan, New York Times, February 28, 2008

"Recovering the Complex Legacy of the Photographer Jacob Riis," Verlyn Klinkenborg, New York Times, February 12, 2008

"Celebration of Faculty Accomplishments February 25," Office of Communications, February 18, 2008

"MHC History Prof Czitrom's Book Celebrated," Office of Communications, December 19, 2007

"Czitrom Reviews A Living Lens: Photographs of Jewish Life," N.Y. Post, May 7, 2007

"Dan Czitrom Discusses How the Country Has Changed Since 9/11," WGBY Watercooler, April 15, 2007 (Video)

"Czitrom to Discuss Currier & Ives," Office of Communications, February 15, 2007

"A Historian in the Theatre: A Conversation with Daniel Czitrom," College Street Journal, October 17, 2003

"Cameras Shoot Where Uzis Can't," New York Times, September 21, 2003

"New York Expert Czitrom Gives Gangs of New York Failing Grade," College Street Journal, January 31, 2003

"Czitrom Contributes to Fall PBS Documentary on New York"