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Alan Dawley (1943–2008): Memorial and Assessment
[Editor's Note: The journal requested the following two essays to commemorate and assess the career of Alan Dawley, who died suddenly while on a study trip in Mexico in March 2008. First, Ann Marie Nicolosi, a colleague and former student, provides a personal remembrance. Then, editorial board member Ian Tyrrell, an authority on the intellectual history of United States history writing, explains why Dawley's books and essays offer excellent examples of the intellectual concerns and development of his generation of United States historians.]
Alan Dawley:
A Personal Remembrance
By Ann Marie Nicolosi, The College of New Jersey
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Alan Dawley was many things to many people. He was a prolific and important scholar whose work has helped to define and shape the study of American history. He was a committed activist, a loving family man, a world traveler, and a man whose intellectual capacities were matched only by his generosity as a teacher and mentor. It is in this latter role that I write about Alan and in this role that Alan left his mark in a very personal sense for me. |
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I had the pleasure of knowing Alan in many capacities. He was my colleague, my fellow activist, sometimes my battle companion, and my friend. But it is as my teacher and mentor that I will remember him best. Indeed, even as we became colleagues and friends, there still remained the element of the wise teacher and mentor and, perhaps, the adoring student who recognized the towering accomplishments of her teacher, accomplishments greater than what she, or very few others in the profession for that matter, could ever hope to achieve. |
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I met Alan some eighteen years ago when I transferred from Brookdale Community College to what was then Trenton State College. As a student a few years older than the traditional undergraduate, I was closer to Alan's generation than to my peers. To Alan's delight, when he asked if anyone knew who Big Brother and the Holding Company were, I shouted out, "Ball and Chain." Now, for the life of me, I cannot remember how Big Brother and the Holding Company fit into a class focused on the early years of twentieth-century America, but I guess it reveals the eclectic nature of the man. |
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Although I had done very well in community college, I was ill-prepared for the rigors of a four-year institution and got my first and only C from Alan. Work that would have earned me an A in community college only garnered a C at Trenton State College. I went to Alan's office, which at that time was in Forcina Hall, a classic example of mid-twentieth-century institutional architecture. As a working-class person, I was still in awe of academics (I quickly got over that) and could not believe that this windowless, airless room with cinderblock walls was his office. And of course, to his amusement, I commented on that fact. After our discussion about his accommodations, Alan sat with me and explained what was missing in my essays and why, although detailed, they were lacking in substance. I never got a C again. |
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