Harvey J. Graff

Harvey J. Graff
Born (1949-06-19) June 19, 1949
Known forScholarship on social history and the history of literacy
Academic work
Discipline
Institutions

Harvey J. Graff (born June 19, 1949) is a comparative social historian[2] as well as a professor emeritus of English and History at Ohio State University.[3] His writings on the history of literacy have been published in eight countries and he is acknowledged internationally for his contributions to urban studies and urban history.[4] Some of his more notable works include two books entitled The Literacy Myth and Conflicting Paths: Growing Up in America.[5]

Education

Harvey J. Graff received the Bachelor of Arts degree from Northwestern University in 1970 followed by Master of Arts from The University of Toronto in 1971, and finally his Doctor of Philosophy, also from The University of Toronto in 1975.[2]

Academic career

Graff’s teaching career began in 1973 as an instructor at Northwestern University Summer School, followed by a position as an extramural lecturer at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education from 1974 to 1975.[6] From 1975 to 1998, he taught at the University of Texas at Dallas, progressing from assistant professor to full professor of History and Humanities.[7] In addition to his permanent positions, Graff held visiting appointments at Loyola University Chicago in 1980 and Simon Fraser University from 1981 to 1982.[6]

In 1998, Graff joined the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) as Professor of History and Director of the Division of Behavioral and Cultural Sciences.[8] He also served on the doctoral faculty for the Ph.D. Program in Culture, Literacy, and Language, and in the English Department, as well as on the graduate faculty in Public Administration.[9]

He joined OSU in 2004 and established the interdisciplinary LiteracyStudies@OSU initiative, which he directed until 2016.[10] During his tenure at OSU, he also held affiliations with academic and research centers, including the Department of Comparative Studies, the Diversity and Identity Studies Collective, the Humanities Institute, the International Poverty Solutions Collaborative, the Mershon Center for International Security Studies, the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity, Project Narrative, Popular Culture Studies, the Neighborhood Institute, and the Future of the University Group.[6] He collaborated extensively with faculty across disciplines, including medicine, law, education, and the sciences, as well as the humanities and social sciences.[11]

He was elected the president of the Social Science History Association (1999-2000). In his presidential address Graff argued that traditional historians had successfully counterattacked against quantification and the innovations of the "new social history":

The case against the new mixed and confused a lengthy list of ingredients, including the following: history’s supposed loss of identity and humanity in the stain of social science, the fear of subordinating quality to quantity, conceptual and technical fallacies, violation of the literary character and biographical base of “good” history (rhetorical and aesthetic concern), loss of audiences, derogation of history rooted in “great men” and “great events,” trivialization in general, a hodge-podge of ideological objections from all directions, and a fear that new historians were reaping research funds that might otherwise come to their detractors. To defenders of history as they knew it, the discipline was in crisis, and the pursuit of the new was a major cause.[12]

He contributes to general media and higher education publications on topics including literacy, academic freedom, book banning, and the future of universities. He also runs an informal learning initiative called “Harvey U.”, a non-traditional global educational model based in Columbus, Ohio.[13]

Books

The Literacy Myth

Written in 1979, this book studies 19th century educators who supported the "literacy myth", as Graff calls it, which is the assumption that literacy translates to economic, social, and cultural success. Graff suggests that this myth views literacy as a necessity for success, and a means to an economic, social, or political end. His research contradicts this, suggesting “that connections between schooling and social mobility are not natural ones".[14] He goes on to say that reality contradicts inborn assumptions correlating literacy and success.[14]

Conflicting Paths: Growing Up in America

The assumption has been made by scholars and the general populace alike “that children have followed in the paths marked out for them by adults, and the possibility that they developed their own reactions and behavior in the course of their maturation has been ignored”.[15] Basically, while social scientists are familiar with normative behavior, little is known about the actual behavior of children as they mature. Conflicting Paths looks at over five-hundred narratives dating from 1750 to 1920 to try and follow the actual process of growing up in America and, if it has, how it has changed over time as well as the effects of factors such as class, gender and ethnicity.[15][16]

Undisciplining Knowledge: Interdisciplinarity in the Twentieth Century

Published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2015. According to the description provided in Google Books:[17] "Interdisciplinarity — or the interrelationships among distinct fields, disciplines, or branches of knowledge in pursuit of new answers to pressing problems — is one of the most contested topics in higher education today. Some see it as a way to break down the silos of academic departments and foster creative interchange, while others view it as a destructive force that will diminish academic quality and destroy the university as we know it... Graff presents readers with the first comparative and critical history of interdisciplinary initiatives in the modern university. Arranged chronologically, the book tells the engaging story of how various academic fields both embraced and fought off efforts to share knowledge with other scholars. It is a story of myths, exaggerations, and misunderstandings, on all sides."

Awards

Graff has also received awards from the American Antiquarian Society, American Council of Learned Societies, Central Mortgage and Housing Corporation, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Science Foundation, The Newberry Library, Spencer Foundation, Swedish Institute, Texas Committee for the Humanities, and the Woodrow Wilson Foundation.[5]

In 2013, he received the first SSHA Special Award recognizing his continuous participation from 1976 through 2013.[18] In 2001, he was awarded the honorary Doctor of Philosophy by the University of Linköping in Sweden for his scholarly contributions.[19]

In 2023, Graff was elected a full member of the American Antiquarian Society. [20]He has been nominated to several academic bodies, including the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the American Philosophical Society, and the National Academy of Education.[21] In retirement, Graff remains active in both scholarly and public discourse. [22]

References

  1. ^ "Harvey J. Graff, Ohio Eminent Scholar in Literacy Studies". Archived from the original on June 10, 2012. Retrieved 28 September 2011.
  2. ^ a b "Harvey Graff explains why interdisciplinary history is often treated with disdain (interview)". History News Network. 2014-05-05. Retrieved 2025-06-11.
  3. ^ Date information sourced from Library of Congress Authorities data, via corresponding Library of Congress Linked Data Service: linked authority record n79078676.
  4. ^ Guest Columnist, cleveland com (2025-05-26). "Searching for conservatism everywhere - and finding it nowhere: Harvey J. Graff". cleveland. Retrieved 2025-06-11.
  5. ^ a b "Harvey J. Graff: Brief Biographical Statement" (PDF). Archived from the original (PDF) on 16 June 2012. Retrieved 25 September 2011.
  6. ^ a b c literarycity (2024-09-06). "Start Reading My Life With Literacy: The Continuing Education of a Historian by Harvey J. Graff". Littsburgh: Celebrating Literary Pittsburgh. Retrieved 2025-06-11.
  7. ^ Allison, By Wick (2008-08-20). "How Dallas Became Big D". D Magazine. Retrieved 2025-06-11.
  8. ^ Galvão, Ana Maria de Oliveira; Gouvêa, Maria Cristina Soares de; Gomes, Ana Maria Rabelo. "Interview with J. Graff & B. Street". Educação em Revista (in Portuguese). 32 (2): 267–282.
  9. ^ Graff, Harvey J. "Lessons for Becoming a Public Scholar". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved 2025-06-11.
  10. ^ Graff, Harvey J. (2022-01-11). "The New Literacy Studies and the Resurgent Literacy Myth". Literacy in Composition Studies. 9 (1): 47–53. doi:10.21623/1.9.1.4. ISSN 2326-5620.
  11. ^ Graff, Harvey J. "Opinion: Attacks on 'critical race theory' a dangerous assault on democracy and education". The Columbus Dispatch. Retrieved 2025-06-11.
  12. ^ Harvey J. Graff, "The Shock of the 'New’ (Histories)': Social Science Histories and Historical Literacies," Social Science History 25.4 (2001) 483-533, quote at p. 490; available in Project Muse
  13. ^ Graff, Harvey J. (2022-12-21). "I'm retired but I'm still running my own unofficial university". Times Higher Education (THE). Retrieved 2025-06-11.
  14. ^ a b Alexander, Kara (2006). Implicit response: Instructor values and social class in the literacy narrative assignment. ProQuest LLCC. pp. 22–23. ISBN 9780549458616. Retrieved 25 September 2011.
  15. ^ a b Magnússon, Sigurður (1997). "Review". Journal of Social History. 30: 733–735. JSTOR 3789556.
  16. ^ Graff, Harvey J. (1995). Conflicting Paths: Growing Up in America: Editorial Reviews. ISBN 0674160665.
  17. ^ Graff, Harvey J. (August 2015). Undisciplining Knowledge: Interdisciplinarity in the Twentieth Century. ISBN 9781421417455. Retrieved 3 May 2019.
  18. ^ II, Robert Greene (2016-02-14). "Structural Diversity in the University Ecosystem | Society for US Intellectual History". s-usih.org. Retrieved 2025-06-11.
  19. ^ "Honorary Doctors". liu.se. Retrieved 2025-06-11.
  20. ^ https://wac.colostate.edu/docs/atd/volume21/duffyetal.pdf Harvey J. Graff: A Tribute John Duffy, University of Notre Dame
  21. ^ Cite error: The named reference :0 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  22. ^ "Busting Myths: Why I remain in Columbus despite Columbus. . . ". ColumbusFreePress.com. Retrieved 2025-06-11.
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