LIFE...

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MATTSON'S HIGHLIGHT REEL

Kevin Mattson is Connor Study Professor of Contemporary History at Ohio University and serves as a faculty associate of the Contemporary History Institute. His work explores the broad intersections between ideas and politics in 20^th century America.  He is author of numerous books, including "What the Heck Are You Up To, Mr. President?": Jimmy Carter, America's "Malaise," and the Speech that Should Have Changed the Country (2009); Rebels All!: A Short History of the Conservative Mind in Postwar America (2008), winner of a Choice "Outstanding Academic Title" Award; Upton Sinclair and the Other American Century (2006); When America Was Great: The Fighting Faith of Postwar Liberalism (2004, 1^st edition, 2006, 2^ndedition); Intellectuals in Action: The Origins of the New Left and Radical Liberalism, 1945-1970 (2002); and Creating a Democratic Public: The Struggle for Urban Participatory Democracy During the Progressive Era (1998).  Additionally, he is co-editor of Liberalism for a New Century (2007) and Steal This University!: The Rise of the Corporate University and the Academic Labor Movement (2003).  He has written essays on a variety of topics for the New York Times Book Review, The Washington Post Book World, The Nation, The American Prospect, Chronicle of Higher Education, and other publications.  He has appeared on numerous talk radio shows as well as Fox News, NPR, C-Span Book TV, and the Colbert Report.  He is presently an affiliated scholar at the Center for American Progress (based in Washington, D.C.) and active in the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).  He serves on the editorial board of Dissent Magazine.

FULL LENGTH BIOGRAPHY

Kevin Mattson was born just inside the Beltway ( Washington , D.C. ) in December 1966 – meaning that he was ultimately born into the liberal elite.  Well, his father was a Republican, his mother a Democrat, and they wasn’t rich folks, but you get the idea.  

Mattson lived a normal life until he “got punk rock” in the 1980s.  He played in numerous bands – Hate from Ignorance, Onto Gel, and Subtle Oppression – in the Washington punk scene.  Today the scene’s mostly known for bands like Fugazi, but Mattson remembers a time way before then, when kids used to “slamdance” with wild abandon.  And dream big dreams.  It can also be pointed out, that it was here that he cut his teeth in writing for what were called fanzines.  

Then Mattson “got politics” and jump-started a youth organization at his high school – the Student Union to Promote Awareness (SUPA).  From that sprang a D.C.-wide youth organization called Positive Force, which worked on issues of homelessness, United States intervention in Central America, the nuclear arms race, and other issues.  Mattson helped produce a political “fanzine” (Off Center), fed poor people, organized protest marches and educational events.  Positive Force wound up finding mention in Maximum Rock n’ Roll, the Nation, City Paper, and the Washington Post.  Mattson remembers these days wistfully, the way the actors in Jonah Who Will Be Twenty Five in the Year Two Thousand remember their heyday.  He has considered writing a movie script along the lines of the Return of the Secaucus Seven but then remembers how much he hated movies like the Big Chill.  He’s getting more convinced, though, that a recent documentary about the band The Minutemen (the best band there was from the 1980s, in his humble opinion) will start pushing aside the nostalgia that baby boomers held for Bob Dylan or, worse yet, Woodstock.  Alas, his cause has not come to fruition.  But it will.  

Mattson soon got tired of activism when he “got ideas.”  He started to educate himself, reading all sorts of weird things like Situationist International tracts, anarchist philosophy, the Frankfurt School, and Hegel.  He went to the New School for Social Research in New York City where he studied German philosophy, social thought, and some other bizarre stuff.  Here he “got argument.”  Then he decided to pursue graduate studies in American history and went to the University of Rochester to study with Christopher Lasch.  It was cold in Rochester, which made it easier to read books.  And in 1994, he earned himself a Ph.D.  

After this, Mattson “got unemployment.”  He slogged it out in the ranks of the underemployed, adjuncting at various colleges, teaching college courses in modern American history, the civil rights movement, radicalism, liberalism, etc.  But Mattson got tired of little pay for hard work.  So he decided to return to activism of a different kind, becoming the Research Director and then the Associate Director at the Walt Whitman Center for the Culture and Politics of Democracy – a non-profit center at Rutgers University (New Joisey) begun by Benjamin Barber.  Here Mattson worked on projects aimed at enhancing participatory democracy.  He counseled public service organizations on how to enhance the way young people thought about civic obligation and politics, developed web sites that nurtured public deliberation, oversaw the work of graduate students who did research projects into participatory democracy, helped community organizations work on planning and civic space, and other things that non-profit organizations require (like the mundane – nay, torturing – task of fundraising and organizing events).  

While at the Whitman Center, he “got Hemingway” and started to learn how to ski (his wife Vicky taught him), raft and canoe rivers, and backpack on long trips through wilderness.  He also wound up adopting a rather cool kid named Joseph (now goes by “Jay”).  And a cat and a dog and another cat along the way.  

He decided in 2001 to move to Ohio University where he became the Connor Study Professor of Contemporary History in 2004 and a faculty associate at the Contemporary History Institute.  He continued to work on projects that examined the intersection between politics, culture, and history.  You can see a list of his books at the Books Section on this website, so no need to repeat that here.  His intellectual works explore a common theme: They are all historical works of political criticism that examine the connection between ideas and public life.  Presently Mattson is writing a history of postwar liberalism with Eric Alterman.  

He also writes on a range of topics in both scholarly and popular publications.  His writings have confronted American politics, the legacy of centrism and liberalism, the use of movies to teach history, the abuses of historical knowledge in public debate, the filmmaking of Michael Moore, the cultural ramifications of 9/11, the Iraq War, the rise of “rock star” intellectuals, the dumbing down of American debate, and other topics he considers interesting and important.  He has written for the New York Times Book Review, the Nation, the American Prospect, Commonweal, the Baffler, the Common Review, the Washington Post Book World, Academe, and other publications.  See a list of his articles at “In Print.”  New pieces are posted under News.  

He has even crashed the exulted gates of the punditocracy by being interviewed on NPR, Fox News (you bet!), Radio Nation, the Tony Trupiano Show, Air America, German Television, Canadian Radio, the New York Times, Politico, the Colbert Report, and even ESPN.  His book talks – posted under “On the Air” – have been televised on C-Span Book TV.  

He is a fellow at the Center for American Progress and active at the national and local level of the American Association of University Professors (AAUP).  He believes anyone teaching at an American university or college should join the AAUP.  He serves on the editorial board of Dissent Magazine, a publication with historical connections to the democratic left and that gang known as the New York Intellectuals.  

He also goes outside, floats down rivers, backpacks mountains and canyons, and fly fishes clear alpine rivers and lakes.  But that’s a different story for another time.  OK, for those interested, you can check writings he has done for Mountain Gazette.