Personal Statement:
I teach courses in American social history dealing with the industrial era (1865-1945) and post-industrial era (1945 to the present). These courses provide a broad overview of fundamental structural changes that have transformed American life since the mid-19th century, focusing on issues involving class, race, ethnicity, gender, and technology. I also teach a research seminar in American social history and from time to time offer an interdisciplinary course (in the Geography and Urban Studies Department) on urban race relations and African American communities in the 20th century. My current research deals with class, race and gender issues since 1960, relating structural change to media representations of society. 

Representative Publications:
Down and Out, On the Road: The Homeless in American History (2002).

Read the AHR review

"Hot War, Cold War, and Civil Rights," Journal of Policy History (2002). 

“Toward a Comparative History of Racism and Xenophobia in the United States and Germany, 1865-1933,” in Bridging the Atlantic: The Question of American Exceptionalism in Perspective, ed. Elisabeth Glaser and Hermann Wellenreuther (2001).

“Sinister Women: Family Conflict, Hollywood Style,” Acoma: Rivista Internationale di Studi Nordamericani (1999).

“African Americans in the City since World War II: From the Industrial to the Post-Industrial Era,” Journal of Urban History (1995).

Editor, Black Communities and Urban Development in America, 1712-1990 (1991).

“An American Tradition: Governmental Action to Promote Equality in American History,” Amerikastudien (1989).

“The Black Urban Experience in American History,” in The State of Afro-American History, ed. Darlene Clark Hine (1986).

A Ghetto Takes Shape: Black Cleveland, 1870-1930 (1978).

Recent Activities:

Professor Kusmer presented two lectures during 2005-06 at Temple University's Dissent in America Forum:  "Hurricane Katrina:  Disaster Journalism and the Politics of Race" and "What Liberal Hollywood:  Exploring an Historical Myth."   In conjunction with his ongoing study of the relationship between the media and the rise of the new conservatism in Amerca, in July/August 2006 he researched the William F. Buckley Video Archives at the Hoover Institution (Stanford University) and also at that time presented a paper at the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch of the AHA.  In June 2007, Professor Kusmer lectured in Italy at the Universities of Genoa and Vercelli, and in July 2007 he was a visiting professor at the John F. Kennedy Institute for North American Studies in Berlin. 

Notes:
Professor Kusmer has lectured widely throughout the United States and Europe including the Center for Advanced Study (Stanford), Princeton University, the John F.Kennedy Institute at the University of Berlin, and the Centro Studi Americani in Rome. He has taught as a visiting professor at the University of Pennsylvania and in 1987-88 held the position of Bancroft Professor of American History at the University of Goettingen (Germany). In 2001, he was a Fulbright lecturer in History at the University of Genoa and in Spring, 2005 returned to Italy as Senior Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Rome.