Background

Bartholomew H. Sparrow was born on August 2, 1959, in Brunswick, Maine, United States, to Edward G. Sparrow, a professor, and Lydia (Huntington) Sparrow.

Education

In 1981, Sparrow received a Bachelor of Arts from Dartmouth College. He also earned a Master of Arts from the University of Texas at Austin, in 1985, and a Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Chicago in 1991.

Career

From 1989 to 1991, Sparrow worked as a lecturer at the University of Chicago. From 1991 to 1999, he was an assistant professor at the University of Texas at Austin, and in 1999, he became an associate professor. Since 2008, he has worked as a professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Also, from 2013 to 2019, he was an associate chair of the Department of Government at the same university.

Sparrow is the author of The Strategist: Brent Scowcroft and the Call of National Security, a biography of the former United States national security advisor. He also authored The Insular Cases and the Emergence of American Empire; Uncertain Guardians: The News Media as a Political Institution; and From the Outside In: World War II and the American State. He is co-editor, with Sanford Levinson, of The Louisiana Purchase and American Expansion, 1803-1898, and, with Roderick Hart, of Politics, Discourse, and American Society: New Agendas.

Achievements

• Sparrow is best known as a professor of government, working at the University of Texas at Austin, and an educator of courses on American territorial expansion, American political institutions and processes, American politics and government, political communication, and the politics of food in America. He is also known as the author of a number of writings and contributor to books. His articles have appeared in the American Political Science Review, Political Communication, Diplomatic History, the International Journal of Public Opinion Research, and other journals.
  
  He has received fellowships from the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard University, and Harry S. Truman Library Institute. He has been awarded the Leonard D. White and the Franklin L. Burdette/Pi Sigma Alpha prizes from the American Political Science Association. He has been recognized as one of the Texas Ten, 2018, an "annual list of inspiring professors, nominated by alumni and selected by the Alcalde magazine," and received the Department of Government's "2017 Graduate Student Outstanding Faculty Award for Distinguished Service to Graduate Students."

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Louisiana Purchase and American Expansion, 1803–1898

    (In this exciting collection, Sanford Levinson and Barthol...)

    2005
  • Politics, Discourse, and American Society

    (In Politics, Discourse, and American Society, some of the...)

    2001
  • The Strategist

    (The Strategist provides an in-depth portrait of a man who...)

    2015
  • The Insular Cases and the Emergence of American Empire

    (The Insular Cases and the Emergence of American Empire re...)

    2006
  • Uncertain Guardians

    (The news media are often presumed to be a fourth estate, ...)

    1999
  • From the Outside In: World War II and the American State

    (From the Outside In examines the profound impact of World...)

    1996

Views

Bartholomew H. Sparrow was attracted to the intricacies of the political world at an early age. Faced with choices such as becoming a journalist, practicing law, or participating directly in politics, Sparrow chose a fourth path. Sparrow could be categorized as a political historian as well as a political scientist. However, it is on the university campus that Sparrow found the flexibility and freedom he desired.

Sparrow says that he has always been interested in politics and government, and being an academic seemed to be the best way for him to study, teach, and write about different topics in government and public policy. He believes that the academy has another advantage: it allows faculty members to read and write what they want (assuming a certain quality) and to keep changing their focus of attention.

He is currently writing about the political and constitutional legacies of the fact that over half of European Americans who arrived in the British North American colonies were unfree workers, bound to their masters for typically four to seven years. For the project he has received support from the American Antiquarian Society, Library Company of Philadelphia, Newberry Library, and College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.

Quotations: "I thought that the most proximate way for me to read and write about politics was to become an academic. So it is by obtaining a doctorate and as a college teacher that I have pursued my interests."

"I can move from subject to subject as long as I do the research and am satisfied that I have come to some sort of closure."

"The subjects of my writing have been of my own choosing. There has been no common formula for how I have come to write on the topics I do. Rather, I have let my own reaction to the received wisdom as reflected in articles, books, and conferences guide me to what I see as areas that have been less thoroughly studied or understood, given my own sense of the political."

Membership

Sparrow is a member of the American Political Science Association, Social Science History Association, Academy of Political Science, Western Political Science Association and Policy History Association.

Interests

• art

• Sport & Clubs

  soccer, bicycling, running

Connections

On May 11, 2002, Sparrow married Polly Lanning.

Father:

Edward G. Sparrow

Mother:

Lydia (Huntington) Sparrow

Wife:

Polly Lanning

References

• Contemporary Authors New Revision Series In response to the escalating need for up-to-date information on writers, Contemporary Authors New Revision Series (Volume 198) brings researchers the most recent data on the world's most popular authors.
  2010