OAH Distinguished Lecturer Profile
Kim Phillips-Fein is an associate professor at the Gallatin School of Individualized Study at New York University. She writes about the creation and decline of New Deal liberalism, the rise of conservative politics in the post–World War II United States, the politics of business, and social and political movements that address economic issues and ideas. She is the author of Invisible Hands: The Businessmen's Crusade Against the New Deal (2009) and Fear City: New York's Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics (2017). With Julian Zelizer, she is a coeditor of What's Good for Business: Business and American Politics Since World War II (2012). She has written for a wide range of scholarly and popular publications, including the Journal of American History, Labor: Studies in the Working-Class History of the Americas, The Nation, and the New York Times.
We think of America as a quintessentially capitalist society. But how has American capitalism changed over time, and what challenges has it faced? This lecture looks at the politics of economic ideas and the fierce contests over economic life throughout the twentieth century.
