Stuart Blumin is professor of history emeritus at Cornell University and former director of the Cornell in Washington program. He works to set the nineteenth-century American experience within larger global transformations, and this, along with a longstanding interest in visual art, has led him to the study of urban representations in painting and graphic art. His recent book on this subject is The Encompassing City: Streetscapes in Early Modern Art and Culture (2009). He is interested, too, in the way social and cultural life intersects with politics and government, and has coauthored two books on this topic (with Glenn Altschuler), Rude Republic: Americans and Their Politics in the Nineteenth Century (2000) and The GI Bill: Reassessing America’s Favorite Legislative Act (forthcoming).

Lecture topics:

• The Encompassing City: Streetscapes in Early Modern Art and Culture
• The GI Bill and the “Greatest Generation”: Reassessing America’s Favorite Act of Congress

Viewed Friday, November 20, 2009