KEVIN M. SCHULTZ
Associate Professor of History, Catholic Studies, and Religious Studies
Email: schultzk@uic.edu
curriculum vitae (pdf)
A native of Los Angeles, Kevin M. Schultz teaches twentieth-century American history and has special interests in religion, ethnoracial history, and American intellectual and cultural life. His first academic monograph, Tri-Faith America (Oxford University Press, 2011), charted the decline of the idea that the United States was a “Christian nation” and the subsequent rise of the idea that the country was premised on something called “Judeo-Christianity.” The book showed how acceptance of the idea of Judeo-Christianity affected surrounding society and culture, in education, collegiate fraternities, suburbs, and the census, during what were the supposedly conformist 1950s.
His interests have moved to the 1960s, and Professor Schultz's current work examines the intertwined lives of William F. Buckley, Jr. and Norman Mailer as a way to explore and better understand that pivotal decade. That book is under contract with W.W. Norton & Co., which wants the manuscript sooner rather than later. He has also had essays appear in several of the profession's flagship journals, including the Journal of American History, American Quarterly, The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, and Labor History, as well as other outlets both popular and academic.
A distinguished teacher, Professor Schultz has won several major teaching awards, including most recently both the 2012-13 Teaching Recognition Award from the Council for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at UIC and the 2012-13 Shirley A. Bill Award for Excellent Teaching, an award selected by UIC History faculty, graduate students, and majors. Professor Schultz is also the author of HIST, a popular college-level textbook, now out in its third edition (Wadsworth, Cengage Learning, 3rd ed. 2013). He also was the founding co-editor of a blog about teaching American history, called TUSH.0.
Selected Publications
Books
Peer-Reviewed Articles and Chapters
- “Everywhere and Nowhere: Religion in the Historiography of the Modern America,” co-authored with Paul Harvey, The Journal of the American Academy of Religion (March 2010), 129-62.
- “Godlessness and the Scopes Trial,” in Charles T. Mathewes and Christopher McKnight Nichols, eds., Prophesies of Godlessness: The Intellectual Tradition of Secularization in America (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), 137-53.
- “The FEPC and the Legacy of the Labor-Based Civil Rights Movement of the 1940s,” Labor History (February 2008), 71-92. ****Winner of Labor History’s Best Article by a Scholar Within Five Years of PhD Completion Prize, 2008.
- “‘Favoritism Cannot be Tolerated’: Challenging de facto Protestantism in America’s Public Schools and Advocating a Neutral State” American Quarterly (September 2007), pp. 565-591.
- “Religion as Identity in Postwar America: The Story of the Last Serious Attempt to Put a Question on Religion in the U.S. Census,” Journal of American History (September 2006), pp. 359-84 ****Highlighted as a “notable article” in Wilson Quarterly (Winter 2007), pp. 82-3.
Essays