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Van E. Gosse

Professor of History, Franklin and Marshall College

About Van

Gosse's research focuses on African American politics; especially in 1790-1860; the United States in the Global Cold War; and the New Left of the "long Sixties." Overarching themes in Gosse's writing include the significance of race and ethnicity in U.S. history; how activist movements make change; and the connections of radicals across the Americas. Gosse is Co-Chair of Historians for Peace and Democracy; a longtime member of the Editorial Collective of the Radical History Review; and Chair of the F&M Votes campaign.

In the News

Opinion: "Why are All the Conservative Loudmouths Irish-American?," Van E. Gosse, Newsweek, October 24, 2017.
Opinion: "I am Class Conscious," Van E. Gosse, HuffPost, July 11, 2016.
Opinion: "Fight for Black Voting Rights Precedes Constitution," Van E. Gosse, Boston Globe, March 12, 2015.

Publications

"United States Textbooks and Puerto Rican History" Modern American History 2, no. 2 (July 2019): 179-182.

Analyzes critically how American history fails to incorporate Puerto Rico into the national narrative.

"Ronald Reagan in Ireland, 1984: A Different Cold War?" Journal of American Studies 47, no. 4 (December 2013): 1155-1174.

Explores how Ronald Reagan's visit to a small European country exposed deep opposition to his new Cold War in Central America.

""As a Nation, the English Are Our Friends": The Emergence of African American Politics in the British Atlantic World, 1772-1861" The American Historical Review 113, no. 4 (October 2008): 1003-1028.

Explores how African Americans used the British Empire to attack slavery before the Civil War.

"Rethinking the New Left: An Interpretative History" (Palgrave MacMillan, 2005).

Outlines a brief history bringing together all the radical movements of the 1960s.

"More Than Just a Politician: Notes Towards a Life and Times of Harold Cruse" in The Crisis of the Negro Intellectual Revisited: A Thirty-Year Retrospective, edited by Jerry G. Watts (Routledge, 2004), 17-40.

Contains the only substantial biographical study of this major figure in the Black Power movement.

"Where the Boys Are: Cuba, Cold War America and the Making of a New Left" (Verso, 1993).

Explores how engaging with Cuban revolutionaries in 1956-1962 helped birth a new radicalism in the United States.