DR. THOMAS SUMMERHILL
College of Social Science, 202 Berkey Hall
Michigan State University
East Lansing, MI 48824
Phone: (517) 355-6673
Email:
POSITIONS
Associate Dean, Academic and Student Affairs, College of Social Science, 2009-
Acting Associate Dean, Academic and Student Affairs, College of Social Science, 2008
Director, Center for Integrative Studies in Social Science, College of Social Science, 2008-9
Associate Professor, Department of History, Michigan State University, 2004-
Assistant Professor, Department of History, Michigan State University, 1997-2004
Adjunct Curator, History Division, Michigan State University Museum, 2000-6
PREVIOUS ACADEMIC POSITIONS
Assistant Professor, Department of History, Drake University, 1995-1997
Visiting Lecturer, University of California, San Diego, 1994-95
Visiting Lecturer, Boston College, 1993-94
Visiting Lecturer, University of Massachusetts, Boston, Spring 1994
Visiting Lecturer, Babson College, Fall 1993
EDUCATION
Ph.D., University of California, San Diego, 1993. Dissertation advisor: Steven Hahn
M.A., Syracuse University, 1986
B.A., State University of New York, College at Cortland, 1984
ADMINISTRATIVE APPOINTMENTS
Associate Dean for Academic and Student Affairs, College of Social Science, Michigan State University, January 1, 2008-present.
Director, Center for Integrative Studies in Social Science, College of Social ScienceMichigan State University, January 1, 2008-December 31, 2009.
ACADEMIC AWARDS AND FELLOWSHIPS
Intramural Research Grant Program Award, Michigan State University, 2005
Honorary Member, Golden Key International Honor Society for teaching excellence, Michigan State
University Chapter, 2004
Nominee, Social Science History Association President’s Award for Best First Manuscript, 2003
Intramural Research Grant Program Award, Michigan State University, 1999
Postdoctoral Fellow, Yale University Institute for Social and Policy Studies, Program in Agrarian Studies,
1996-97
Drake University Humanities Grant, 1996
Albert J. Beveridge Grant for Research in the History of the Western Hemisphere, American Historical
Association, 1995
Nominee, Allan Nevins Prize of the Society of American Historians, 1993
University of California, San Diego Humanities Predoctoral Dissertation Writing Fellowship, 1992
Graduate Fellow, National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, 1991
University of California, San Diego Dissertation Research Fellowship, 1990-91
University of California Regents Fellowship, 1987-88
CURRENT RESEARCH PROJECT
“Fighting the Union: Anti-War Politics in the Civil War North”. Book examines political opposition to the Lincoln administration’s war policies from 1861 to 1865. Subtopics include anti-abolitionist riots; the Copperhead movement; rural and urban draft riots; and labor politics.
PUBLICATIONS
Harvest of Dissent: Agrarianism in Nineteenth-Century New York. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2005.
Nominated for the Social Science History Association’s President’s Award for 2003. Released in paperbackJanuary 2008.
Co-editor with James C. Scott. Transatlantic Rebels: Agrarian Radicalism in Comparative Context. East Lansing,
Mich.: Michigan State University Press, 2004.
“The Anti-Rent Movement,” in Eric Arneson, ed., Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working Class History, New
York: Routledge, 2006.
“The U.S. as a Postcolonial State, 1790-1860,” in Summerhill and Scott, Transatlantic Rebels: Agrarian
Radicalism in Comparative Context (East Lansing, Mich.: Michigan State University Press, 2004), 55-86.
Co-author with Kenneth Lewis, The Agricultural Landscape of Michigan: An Historic Context for the Theme of
Agriculture, forthcoming, Michigan Department of Transportation.
“Farming on Shares: Landlords, Tenants, and the Rise of the Hops and Dairy Economies in Central New
York,” New York History, 76 (April 1995): 125-152.
BOOK REVIEWS
Review of Rusty Bittermann, Rural Protest on Prince Edward Island: From British Colonization to the Escheat
Movement (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006),American Historical Review, 113 (April
2008): 484.
Review of Thomas J. Humphrey, Land and Liberty: Hudson Valley Riots in the Age of Revolution (DeKalb, Ill.:
Northern Illinois University Press, 2004), American Historical Review, 111 (February 2006): 163-4.
Review of W. Scott Poole, Never Surrender: Confederate Memory and Conservatism in the South Carolina
Upcountry (Athens, Georgia.: University of Georgia Press, 2004), H-NET BOOK REVIEW,
Published by (December 2005)
Review of Charles W. McCurdy, The Anti-Rent Era in New York Law and Politics, 1839-1865 (Chapel Hill:
University of North Carolina Press, 2001), New York History, 84 (Fall 2003): 441-43.
Review of Martin Bruegel, Farm, Shop, and Landing: The Rise of Market Culture in the Hudson Valley, 1790-1860
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2002), Journal of American History, 90 (June 2003): 218-19.
Review of Craig Hanyan and Mary Hanyan, DeWitt Clinton and the Rise of the People’s Men (Montreal: McGill-
Queen’s University Press, 1996), Canadian Review of American Studies, 28 (Fall 1998): 134-136.
Review of Hal S. Barron, Mixed Harvest: The Second Great Transformation in the Rural North, 1870-1930
(Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1997), New England Quarterly, 71 (June 1998):
125-127.
Review of James A. Rawley, Abraham Lincoln and a Nation Worth Fighting For (Wheeling, Ill.: Harlan Davidson,
1996), Journal of Southern History, 63 (August 1997): 671-672.
Review of Marilyn P. Watkins, Rural Democracy: Family Farmers and Politics in Western Washington, 1890-
1925 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995), Western Historical Quarterly, 28 (Spring 1997): 93-94.
Review of Charles E. Brooks, Frontier Settlement and Market Revolution: The Holland Land Purchase (Ithaca:
Cornell University Press, 1996), Journal of Economic History, 57 (March 1997): 249-250.
Review of Donald H. Parkerson, The Agricultural Transition in New York State: Markets and Migration in Mid-
Nineteenth-Century America (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1995), New York History, 78
(January 1997): 86-87.
Review of Sally A. McMurry, Transforming Rural Life: Dairying Families and Agricultural Change, 1820-1885
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1995), New York History, 76 (October 1995): 433-435.
Review of Lee A. Craig, To Sow One Acre More: Childbearing and Farm Productivity in the Antebellum North
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), New York History, 76 (April 1995): 208-209.
Review of Donald B. Marti, Women of the Grange: Mutuality and Sisterhood in Rural America, 1868-1920
(Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1991), New York History, 75 (July 1994): 329-331.
CONFERENCES AND PRESENTATIONS
“Treason or Politics as Usual?: Dissent, Party, and Federal Power in Civil War Cooperstown, N.Y.,” George
M. Blackburn Endowed Lecture on the Civil War and Reconstruction, Department of History,
Central Michigan University, November 14, 2007.
“Mob Law Triumphant: Anti-Abolitionist Rioting in Syracuse During the Secession Crisis,” paper presented at
the Lockmiller Seminar, Emory University, Department of History, November 5, 2007.
“Anti-Abolitionist Rioting and the Secession Crisis in Syracuse”, paper presented at the Conference on New
York State History, New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, New York, June 8, 2007.
“Farming the Empire State in the 19th Century: Reflections on the Past and Ideas for the Future,” The
Farmers’ Museum’s Evening Lecture Series, “Rural New York in Transition”, Fenimore Art Museum,
New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, New York, November 3, 2006.
“Harvest of Dissent: Agrarianism in Nineteenth-Century New York,” public talk and book signing, Albany
Institute of History and Art, April 1, 2006.
“Where Front and Home Front Met: The Significance of ‘Border’ Areas in the Civil War,” paper presented at
the Great Lakes History Conference, Grand Valley State University, October 29, 2005.
“Central New York Farmers, Protest, and the Making of Modern America,” presented at the Fenimore Art
Museum, New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, New York, July 22, 2005.
“The Story of the A&S: Who Built It, Who Paid for It, and Who Stole It?” presented at the Fenimore Art
Museum, New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, New York, November 8, 2002.
“Captain Jack: Tenant Unrest and the Reconstruction of Rural New York,” paper presented at the American
Historical Association Conference, Chicago, January 8, 2000.
“The Hop Pickers: Harvest Labor and Economic Change in Nineteenth-Century New York,” paper presented
to the Department of History, Fairfield University, October 22, 1999.
“Golden Harvest: Hop Pickers in Nineteenth-Century New York,” paper presented to the Department of
History Seminar, Michigan State University, October 1, 1999.
“The Hop Pickers,” public lecture presented at the Madison County Hops Festival, Oneida, New York,
August 7, 1999.
“The North,” paper presented as part of panel entitled, “Beyond the New History: Refocusing Twenty Years
of Scholarship on the South, North, and West,” at the Eightieth Anniversary Symposium of the
Agricultural History Society, Mississippi State University, June 18, 1999.
“Captain Jack: Tenant Unrest in Postbellum New York,” paper delivered at the Program in Agrarian Studies
Colloquia Series, Institute for Social and Policy Studies, Yale University, April 11, 1997.
“’As Wise as Serpents and as Harmless as Doves’: Elites, Electioneering, and the Crowd in Jacksonian New
York,” paper delivered at the Boston Seminar in Early American History, Center for the Study of
New England Culture, Massachusetts Historical Society, December 3, 1996.
“‘I am the big wheel that turns the whole mill’: George Clarke and the Hops Economy in Central New York,”
public lecture delivered at the Fenimore House Museum, New York State Historical Association,
Cooperstown, New York, October 6, 1996.
“‘In Sackcloth and Ashes’: The Political and Social Unraveling of the Anti-Rent Movement,” paper presented
at the Anti-Rent Wars in History and Politics Symposium, SUNY Delhi, September 24, 1994.
“‘Fourierism, Agrarianism, and Infidelity’: Plebeian Political Culture and the Anti-Rent Movement in Upstate
New York, 1839-1850,” paper delivered at the Organization of American Historians Conference, April
14, 1994.
“‘Irrepressible Racial Development’: The Grange and the Definition of Americanism,” paper presented at the
Duquesne History Forum, October 13, 1993.
“‘Fourierism, Agrarianism, and Infidelity’: The Cultural Legacy of the Anti-Rent Movement in Upstate New
York, 1840-1900,” paper presented at the Interdisciplinary Nineteenth Century Studies Conference,
Yale University, April 5, 1991.
CONFERENCE CHAIR/COMMENTATOR
Chair, Commentator, “Jacksonians, Populists, and the Southern Agrarians: Radical Conservatives All?” panel, Great
Lakes History Conference, Grand Valley State University, Grand Rapids, Michigan, October 18, 2008.
Commentator, Judge, “Labor and the Great Depression,” panel, Phi Alpha Theta Conference, Michigan State
University, March 17, 2007.
Chair, Commentator, “Changing Borders in the Civil War,” panel, Great Lakes History Conference, Grand
Valley State University, Grand Rapids, Michigan, October 29, 2004.
Comment, “Markets and Mores on the Cotton Frontier,” panel, Southern Historical Association Conference,
Little Rock, Arkansas, October 31, 1996.
Comment, “Between Frontier and City: Ohio Women, 1788-1860,” panel, Society for Historians of the Early
American Republic Conference, Boston College, July 15, 1994.
MAJOR GRANTS
Primary Investigator, Michigan Agricultural Heritage Project, 2000-4, with co-investigators Terrance Shaffer
and Kenneth Lewis. The MAHP team received a grant of $250,000 from the Michigan Department
of Transportation to research and write and “agricultural context document” to bring the state into
compliance with federal historic preservation guidelines regarding rural historic sites. My duties
included co-authoring the final report; administering the grant; planning and conducting weekly team
meetings; overseeing undergraduate and graduate student researchers; establishing a database for GIS
mapping of agricultural production; and meeting with MDOT and SHPO officials on a periodic basis.
Final report complete.
MEDIA APPEARANCES
Interviewed on the progressive radio program, “Talking History,” WRPI-FM, Troy, N.Y., by Gerald Zahavi,
March 30, 2006. Archived interview available at
PROFESSIONAL SERVICE
Editorial Board, Journal of the Study of Radicalism. 2006-2010
OUTREACH
Consultant/Presenter, “Freedom and the American Civil War”, Lansing Teaching American History Program,
June 13, 2007.
Consultant/Presenter, “Freedom’s Work: Abolitionists During the Civil War Era”, Lansing Teaching
American History Program/Smithsonian Institution, held at the Michigan Historical Museum,
September 28, 2006.
Faculty, Teaching of American History Program, Battle Creek School District, U.S. Department of Education
Grant, 2006-7. Program Director, Elizabeth Ashburn. Faculty: Peter Knupfer, David Bailey, Thomas
Summerhill, and Keith Widder. Part of six-year, $6 million grant “Project Time/Teaching History” to provide teacher in-service training in US history in the Battle Creek School District in partnership with the MSU Department of History. Faculty participants lead seminars, help teachers develop lesson plans that integrate secondary scholarship and primary source materials, and act as resources during the school year as teachers implement new modules.
Facilitator, “Agriculture in Upstate New York,” seminar, Master Teacher Summer Institute, Upstate New
York American History Education Alliance, hosted by the Farmer’s Museum, New York State
Historical Association, July 18-22, 2005.
Facilitator, “Identifying Resources and Interpreting Rural Protest Movements,” in-service workshop for
secondary teachers held at the New York State Historical Association, November 8, 2002.
Consultant, Michigan Agriculture Preservation Project, Michigan State University Libraries, 2001,
coordinated by Jeanne Drewes and Anita Ezzo. Project funded by the NEH to preserve rare and
significant books, manuscripts, and pamphlets on the history of Michigan agriculture from 1820 to
1945. My role was to select materials contained in libraries statewide for microfilming and preservation.
PUBLIC HISTORY
Consultant, Farmer’s Museum, New York State Historical Association, Cooperstown, New York, Fall 1996.
Duties: act as primary agricultural historian for the museum as it changes its exhibits to reflect life on
a New York farm in 1845; meet with staff, sharing knowledge of rural social, economic, and political
life; and serve as ongoing research consultant.
Research Consultant, Erie Canal Museum, Syracuse, New York, 1986-87. Duties included researching and
Writing articles published in Michael Flusche, ed., Homefront: The Erie Canal and the Civil War
(Syracuse: Erie Canal Museum, 1987), locating and collecting material objects for inclusion in a
traveling exhibit, and liaising between the Erie Canal Museum and local historical societies.
ARCHIVED INTERVIEWS
Interview with Rev. Edwin King, Vincent Voice Library, Michigan State University Library, November 30,
1999, with Matthew Whitaker.
UNIVERSITY EVENTS ORGANIZED
Organized visit of Reverend Edwin King to Michigan State University, November 29-December 1, 1999. Rev.
King delivered lectures to the Department of History, the Center for Integrative Studies in the Arts
and Humanities, the School of Journalism, the Detroit College of Law, and several History and IAH
courses. I put together funding from Comparative Black History, the Department of History,
CISAH, American Studies, the College of Arts and Letters, Journalism and the Detroit College of
Law to bring Rev. King to campus. I oversaw the events, coordinated with members of several
departments, programs, and colleges, and arranged for him to meet undergraduates, graduates, faculty, and administrators.
HISTORY DEPARTMENT SERVICE
Michigan State University Hearing Board, 2007-8
American Studies Advisory Board, Michigan State University, 2007-8
Department Advisory Committee, Convener, Department of History, Fall 2007
Chair, Publicity Committee, Department of History, 2007-8
Co-Chair, Publicity Committee, Department of History, 2006-7
Tenure & Promotion Committee, Department of History, Fall 2005
Internal Review Committee, Department of History, Fall 2005
Curriculum Committee, Department of History,, 2004
Chair, U.S. Field Caucus, Department of History, 2004-5
Center for Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities Advisory Committee, College of Arts & Letters,
2001-2004
Faculty of Record, Center for Integrative Studies in the Arts and Humanities, 2001-2003
Departmental Awards Committee, Department of History, 2002-2003
Undergraduate Committee, Department of History, 2001-2002
Annual Review Committee, Department of History, 1999-2000
Undergraduate Committee, Department of History, 1999
African American History Search Committee, Department of History, 1999-2000
Endowment Committee, Department of History, 1998-2000
Graduate Admissions Committee, Department of History, 1997-1998
United States History Search Committee, Department of History, Drake University, 1996
OTHER DEPARTMENT SERVICE
Coordinator, Department of History Web Site Revision, 2005-2006
OTHER
Mentor, Fulbright Visiting Researcher Program, 2004-5 for Ph.D. candidate Victoria Shkurkina, Tomsk State
Pedagogical University, Russia. Topic: Comparative study of U.S. and Russian Agriculture, 1780-1820.
COMMUNITY SERVICE
Organized, with Marshanda Smith, appearance by Rev. Edwin King at the Union Baptist Church of Lansing,
November 28, 1999, Rev. Melvin Jones, Pastor.
MEMBERSHIPS IN PROFESSIONAL ORGANIZATIONS
American Historical Association
Organization of American Historians
Agricultural History Society
New York State Historical Association
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