Sugrue lends youth to History faculty

History Department Undergraduate Chairperson Bruce Kuklick cannot imagine the department without Professor Thomas Sugrue. "We searched for several years unsuccessfully for a 20th century American history [professor]," said Kuklick, who was one of the people responsible for hiring Sugrue and recently granting him tenure. Describing his relationship with the younger Sugrue as a running "generational debate," Kuklick explained the differences between their takes on recent American history. "I would describe my views as mature," said Kuklick, who acknowledged the fact that his perspective comes from direct personal experience, while Sugrue's does not. "In that sense, [Sugrue] is really the historian, untainted by [recent historical events]." The events that usually spur friendly debate between Kuklick and Sugrue are those of the 1960s -- a decade in which Kuklick was protesting the Vietnam War while Sugrue was just beginning to walk. Most know Sugrue as the professor who teaches History 373, "America in the 1960s." While his concentration is that tumultuous period in recent American history, his interests are by no means limited to that decade. "I still have a great interest in colonial history," said Sugrue, who attributes much of his passion to a high school history professor who was himself "a product of the 1960s." But during his studies at Columbia University and King's College in England, Sugrue discovered that 20th century history was still uncharted territory and decided to pursue a concentration that he described as "a terra incognita for historians." "The questions the '60s raise are questions that are out there still, unresolved in current American politics, in current American culture," he said, pointing to continuing debates over welfare, poverty and the role of women in society as issues first debated in the 1960s. Although Sugrue's relatively removed perspective on the '60s may be seen as something of an anomaly, many cannot help but notice his love of the subject. "He has an infectious enthusiasm," History Chairperson Lynn Lees said. "[He] makes his audience feel a personal stake in the issues at hand." Describing him as "impassioned" about the era, College senior Dan Saval pointed to Sugrue's classroom antics. He said, for example, that Sugrue "throws his hands up a lot and runs around" during his lectures. Still feeling the afterglow of his recently published book, The Origins of the Urban Crisis, Sugrue noted that the book was "selling better than my editors thought it would sell." Sugrue -- who is considering taking a sabbatical next year to conduct research -- continues to incorporate many different historical perspectives in his work, as he did in Crisis. His next books include a "thematic overview" of the 1960s, based on his course and one on "the history of racial integration and its politics between the 1930s and the present. "I'm combining intellectual, political and social history? for a top-down look at how [racial integration] played out in various localities."