Mark I. Gelfand

Background

Mark was born in the United States.

Education

Mark studied at Columbia University and received Ph.D. in 1972.

Career

Mark worked as an acting assistant professor of history at University of California, Berkeley, 1972-1974. In two years he became assistant professor of history at Boston College, and from 1978 an associate professor of history.

Mark is a contributor to books, including Exploring the Johnson Years, 1981, Snowbelt Cities: Metropolitan Politics in the Northeast and Midwest Since World War II, Metropolitan Governance Revisited. He also wrote his research A Nation of Cities: The Federal Government and Urban America, 1933-1965, which became higly popular. Joseph L. Arnold noted Gelfand’s judgments in the book “cautious and tentative,” and further observed that ambiguous definitions of “the city” can lead to different conclusions as to the long-term effects of federal aid to cities. Arnold concludes that Gelfand’s view of urbanization “lends credence to the assertion that our late-twentieth-century cities ... are accurate physical expressions of the dominant values and modes of thought of the American people.”

He is currently writing a biography of Judge Charles E. Wyzanski, Jr. (1906-1986), who sat in the Federal District Court in Boston from 1942 until his death. Professor Gelfand has offered courses on the U.S. in the 20th Century and on American legal and business history, as well as graduate colloquia on the modern reform tradition and American historiography, 1860-present.

Achievements

• Mark Gelfand is a popular professor at Boston College, whose historical interests center on the development of public policy in response to the challenges posed by the rise of the urban/industrial order in the 20th century. He is a contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including American Historical Review, Business History Review and the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A Nation of Cities: The Federal Government and Urban America, 1933-1965
  • Trustee For A City: Ralph Lowell of Boston

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 181