View Harvey J. Graff's cv.

Harvey J. Graff is Professor Emeritus of English and History, inaugural Ohio Eminent Scholar in Literacy Studies, and Academy Professor at The Ohio State University. Joining OSU in 2004, he created and directed the LiteracyStudies@OSU interdisciplinary university-wide initiative until 2016. Previously, he was Professor of History and member of three doctoral faculties at the University of Texas at San Antonio, and Professor of History and Humanities (with multiple cross-appointments) at the University of Texas at Dallas.

In 1999-2000, Graff served as President of the Social Science History Association for its twenty-fifth anniversary year. In 2001, the University of Linköping in Sweden awarded him the Doctor of Philosophy honoris causa for his contributions to scholarship. In 2010, he received OSU’s Distinguished Undergraduate Research Mentor Award. In 2013-14, he was Birkelund Fellow at the National humanities Center. In 2013, he received the first Social Science History Association special award for continuous participation 1976-2013, and beyond. In 2023, he was elected a full member of the American Antiquarian Society. He is a nominee to the American Association for the Arts and Sciences, American Philosophical Society, and National Academy of Education.

Recipient of a Bachelor of Arts degree with honors (1970) from Northwestern University, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa and awarded a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, Graff received the Master of Arts (1971) and Doctor of Philosophy (1975) degrees from The University of Toronto with university and research fellowship support. He served as a lecturer at Northwestern University, visiting professor in history at Loyola University, Chicago; in history, education, and English at Simon Fraser University, Canada; and several universities in Brazil.

At The Ohio State University, Graff was Faculty Affiliate of the Department of Comparative Studies, Diversity and Identity Studies Collaborative; Humanities Institute; International Poverty Solutions Collaborative; Mershon Center for International Security Studies; Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity; Project Narrative; Popular Culture Studies; Neighborhood Institute; and Future of the University Group, among others. He collaborated with faculty in Medicine, Law, Education, the Sciences, and across the Humanities and Social Sciences.

He remains a member of the President’s and Provost’s Advisory Committee and the Emeritus Academy.

In retirement, he is active professionally and as a public scholar. He publishes both scholarly writings and public journalism in general media and the higher education press. He participates actively against book banning, attacks on critical race theory, and “reconstructing” universities among a variety of topics.

He also oversees “Harvey U.,” with no tuition or indebtedness, very small classes, no grades or Rate My Professor. He must learn from all participants well as teach them. Based in Columbus, it is worldwide.

A comparative social historian, Graff is known internationally, especially for his books and articles on the history of literacy and the importance of that history to contemporary issues, his contributions to urban history and urban studies, his research on the history of children, adolescents, and youth; studies of interdisciplinarity; and work on higher education past and present. His writings are published in Canada, Great Britain, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Spain, Brazil, and (in progress) China, as well as the United States. He traveled to speak in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, Sweden, Italy, Mexico, The Netherlands, Spain, across the United States, and virtually in the United Arab Emirates. In August, 2014, he was visiting professor at Federal University of Minas Gerais and State University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (UERJ). He has spoken via Zoom or on broadcasts in the United Arab Emirates, England, Ireland, and invited to speak in Portugal.

Graff is a recipient of awards and fellowships from Northwestern University, the state of Pennsylvania, the Woodrow Wilson Foundation, University of Toronto and Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation (Canada), National Endowment for the Humanities, American Council of Learned Societies, Texas Committee for the Humanities, University of Texas at Dallas, The Swedish Institute, National Science Foundation, The Newberry Library, Spencer Foundation, American Antiquarian Society, University of Texas at San Antonio, and Ohio State University. He has been a fellow of The Newberry Library, the National Academy of Education (Spencer Fellow), the American Antiquarian Society, the University of Texas at San Antonio, the William P. Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University, Ohio State University, and National Humanities Center and Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences.

He was nominated for the Grawemeyer Award for Education for 1995 and subsequent years. The University of Texas at Dallas awarded him a Special Faculty Development Assignment for his research for 1997-1998, and UT-San Antonio for Fall 2002. OSU awarded a special research assignment in 2007 and a faculty professional leave in 2011-2012. For 2013-2014, he was awarded fellowships from the National Humanities Center and the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford University. At the National Humanities Center, he completed most of Undisciplining Knowledge: Interdisciplinarity in the Twentieth Century.

Among Professor Graff’s major works are The Literacy Myth: Literacy and Social Structure in the Nineteenth-Century City (Academic Press, 1979; new edition, Transaction Publications, 1991; 4^th edition with new material WAC Clearinghouse, 2023); Literacy in History: An Interdisciplinary Research Bibliography (Garland, 1981); Dallas, Texas: A Guide to the Sources of Its Social History, with Alan Baron and Charles Barton (University of Texas Press, 1981); The Legacies of Literacy: Continuities and Contradictions in Western Culture and Society (Indiana University Press, 1987, Italian edition, 1989, Critics’ Choice Award of the American Educational Studies Society); The Labyrinths of Literacy: Reflections on Literacy Past and Present (Falmer Press, 1987; revised and expanded edition, University of Pittsburgh Press, Series on Composition, Literacy, and Culture, 1995; Portuguese translation); Conflicting Paths: Growing Up in America (Harvard University Press, 1995; Choice Magazine Outstanding Academic Book Award, 1995). A new collection of his essays was published in Italian in the distinguished series “Il Sapere Del Libro” from Edizioni Sylvestre Bonnard in Milan (series includes Roger Chartier, Robert Darnton, and Donald McKenzie).

In 2008, he published The Dallas Myth: The Making and Unmaking of an American City (University of Minnesota Press); in 2011 Literacy Myths, Legacies, and Lessons: New Studies of Literacy (Transaction Publishers, new enlarged edition WAC Clearinghouse, 2023); in 2015 Undisciplining Knowledge: Interdisciplinarity in the Twentieth Century (Johns Hopkins University Press); and in 2022 Searching for Literacy: The Social and Intellectual Origins of Literacy Studies (Palgrave Macmillan).

Graff’s innovative, hybrid autobiography My Life with Literacy: The Continuing Education of a Historian: Intersections of the Personal, the Political, the Academic, and Place is published by University Press of Colorado and WAC Clearinghouse in 2024. Reconstructing the “Uni-versity” from the Ashes of the “Multi- and Mega-Versity” is under review by Lexington Books/Bloomsbury. He is also editing a collection of first-person essays on alternative and non-traditional academic career paths: Changing Paths of Academic Lives: Revising How We Understand Higher Education/Universities, 1960s to 2020s and Beyond, edited collection of original essays with introduction (Fort Collins, CO: Landmarks Series, Writing Across the Curriculum Clearing House Publishers and Boulder: University Press of Colorado, in progress).

Graff has published more than thirty books and several hundred articles and essays on the history of cities; education; literacy; family, women, and children; growing up; criminality; social structure and population; interdisciplinarity; higher education; and methodology and theory in numerous journals. A contributor to a number of encyclopedias and reference works, his writings are often reprinted and translated.

Graff coauthored Children and Schools in Nineteenth-Century Canada/L’école canadienne et l’enfant au dixneuvième siècle with Alison Prentice (Canada’s Visual History, National Museum of Man, 1979; revised edition on CD-ROM, 1994); and edited Quantification and Psychohistory with Paul Monaco (University Press of America, 1980); Literacy and Social Development in the West (Cambridge University Press, 1981, Italian edition, 1986); National Literacy Campaigns: Historical and Comparative Perspectives with Robert Arnove (Plenum Publications, 1987); Growing Up in America: Historical Experiences (Wayne State University Press, 1987); Looking Backward and Looking Forward: Perspectives on Social Science History (University of Wisconsin Press, 2004); and Understanding Literacy in its Historical Contexts: Socio-Cultural History and the Legacy of Egil Johansson, co-editor with Alison Mackinnon, Bengt Sandin, and Ian Winchester (Lund, Sweden: Nordic Academic Press, 2009).

He prepared the chapter on history for The Social Worlds of Higher Education: Handbook for Teaching in a New Century (1999), a project of the American Sociological Association, and the entry on literacy for the Oxford Companion to United States History (2001). Graff’s book, The Dallas Myth: The Making and Unmaking of an American City (University of Minnesota Press, 2008), is an experiment in historical writing, a new approach to and interpretation of American urban life, and an urban historian and urbanite’s critical reflections on the city’s past, present, and future.

His 2015 book, Undisciplining Knowledge: Interdisciplinarity in the Twentieth Century, is published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2015. It attracted widespread international attention.

With his move to OSU, he returned to the study of literacy in American society and culture, and a special focus on the interdisciplinary university-wide LiteracyStudies@OSU Initiative. In 2009, under his supervision, OSU and a national/international group of graduate students organized the Expanding Literacy Studies international conference for more than 300 graduate students from six countries. In May 2024, the Expanding Literacy Studies/Harvey J. Graff international reunion took place with former students and colleagues from more than four decades.

The Columbus Myth and the Biggest U.S. City without an Identity and a History: A City Stuck Between Its Past and Future and Understanding North American Universities are proposed collections of original essays.

Graff served on the editorial boards of such journals as Interchange, History of Education Quarterly, Historical Methods, Social Science History, Historical Social Research/Historische Sozialforschung, Literacy and Numeracy Studies, Journal of Language, Identity, and Education, Literacy and Composition Studies, and several book series. He was an advisory board member for H-Urban and H-Childhood of the H-Net history and humanities electronic Internet networks. He reviews manuscripts and books for numerous presses and journals.

Past president of North Texas Phi Beta Kappa, Graff has held offices in the Canadian Association for American Studies, History of Education Society, Urban History Association, Society for the History of Children and Youth, and Social Science History Association. In 1998-99, he served as Vice President and President-Elect, and in 1999-2000, President of the Social Science History Association. He presided over the 25th anniversary of the SSHA, a combined celebration and critical stock-taking with the theme “Looking Backward and Looking Forward: Perspectives on Social Science History.”