Rosenberg, Emily S. 1944- (Emily Schlaht Rosenberg)

PERSONAL:

Born 1944 in Sheridan, WY; daughter of Albert A. (a life insurance executive) and Helen Schlaht; married Norman L. Rosenberg (a professor of history), June 4, 1966; children: Sarah, Molly, Ruth, Joseph. Education: University of Nebraska, B.A., 1966; State University of New York at Stony Brook, M.A., 1969, Ph.D., 1973.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Irvine, CA. Office—Department of History, University of California, Irvine, 269 Murray Krieger Hall, Irvine, CA 92697-3275; fax: 949-824-2865. E-mail—erosenbe@uci.edu.

CAREER:

Central Michigan University, Mount Pleasant, assistant professor in honors college, 1973-74; Macalester College, St. Paul, MN, began as assistant professor, became associate professor, later became full professor, 1975-2006; University of California, professor, 2006. Visiting assistant professor at University of Minnesota, 1978; lecturer for World Press Institute, 1978-90. Appointed state commissioner of Minnesota Humanities Commission, 1987-91. After-play commentator for local theaters; speaker on U.S. foreign policy; consultant to Historical Office of U.S. Department of State and Teaching American History workshops. Member of various selection committees and advisory councils.

MEMBER:

American Historical Association; Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations; Organization of American Historians; Women Historians of the Midwest.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Numerous fellowships from foundations and institutions, including American Association of University Women, 1971-72, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1983-84, San Diego State University, 1996-97; Burlington-Northern Award for Outstanding Teaching, 1993; Thomas Jefferson Award for Outstanding Teaching, scholarship, and college service, 1994; Outstanding Faculty Award, Macalester Alumni of Color, 1999; Distinguished Alumni Award, College of Arts and Sciences, University of Nebraska, 2000; Robert Ferrell Senior Book Award, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, 2000; Choice magazine selected Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890-1945 as one of the outstanding academic books of 1982.

WRITINGS:

NONFICTION

(With David Burner and Robert Marcus) America: A Portrait in History, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1973, revised edition, 1978.

(With husband, Norman L. Rosenberg) In Our Times: America since World War II, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1976, 7th edition, 2003.

(Editor, with Norman L. Rosenberg) Postwar America: Readings and Reminiscences, Prentice-Hall (Englewood Cliffs, NJ), 1976, revised edition, 1980.

Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890-1945, Hill & Wang (New York, NY), 1982.

World War I and the Growth of the United States Predominance in Latin America, Garland (New York, NY), 1987.

(Coauthor) Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People, Harcourt Brace (Fort Worth, TX), 1996.

(With Gary Gerstle and N.L. Rosenberg) America Transformed: A History of the United States since 1900, Harcourt Brace (Fort Worth, TX), 1999.

Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900-1930, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1999.

A Date Which Will Live: Pearl Harbor in American Memory, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2003.

Coeditor, with Gilbert Joseph, of series "American Encounters/Global Interactions," Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 1998—. Contributor to books, including The Cambridge History of the Cold War, edited by Odd Arne Westad and Melvyn P. Leffler, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY); Selling War in a Media Age: The Presidency and Public Opinion in the American Century, edited by Andrew Frank and Kenneth Osgood; and Charity, Philanthropy, and Civility in American History, edited by Lawrence J. Friedman and Mark D. McGarvie, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 2003. Associate editor, American National Biography, 1990-96. Member of various editorial boards, including Encyclopedia of the United States in the Twentieth Century, Scribner's, 1995, Reviews in American History, 1992-97, and Journal of American History, 1997-2000. Contributor of articles and reviews to professional journals and periodicals, including Diplomatic History, Journal of American History, and American Historical Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

Emily S. Rosenberg is a historian with a special interest in the history of the economic and cultural expansion experienced in the United States from the late nineteenth century up to current times. Foreign policy is another area of expertise for Rosenberg; it is the subject of two of her books, Spreading the American Dream: American Economic and Cultural Expansion, 1890-1945 and Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900-1930. Rosenberg is also particularly interested in the ways that cultural construction and gender issues affect international relations.

In Financial Missionaries to the World, Rosenberg takes a close look at the economic-driven foreign policy in the early twentieth century. She explores the differences between antibanking discourses and those that are more professional-managerial in focus. Rosenberg notes that antibanking sentiment holds that money is a force driving greed, corruption, and the like; this, the author points out, is a perspective with its basis in Christianity. The contrasting viewpoint considers money the means to prosperity and efficiency. Financial Missionaries to the World shows how the United States, in the early twentieth century, hoped to stabilize the global economy by lending money to other countries in exchange for some control over foreign economies. "As Rosenberg brilliantly describes, the practice involved more than simply economic arrangements and policy issues," noted Richard Robbins in a review for Journal of World History. "It involved cultural contexts that promoted the growth of professionalism, scientific theories that accentuated racial and gender differences, and a mass media propagating primitive stereotypes of the Other…. More importantly, dollar diplomacy allowed the United States to press fiscal reform on other countries without having to assume the risk of assuming political sovereignty." Gail D. Triner of the Canadian Journal of History said it "is a well-written and well-researched exploration of the political and cultural contexts" of this financial foreign policy. The book was also recommended by Julian J. Delgaudio in History: Review of New Books. He stated: "This is a complex and superbly researched study that ranges easily over economic theory, diplomatic history, and cultural analysis. The book's greatest strength is the careful detail with which Rosenberg shows how the logic of empire subverted efforts at financially based control by requiring military interventions as such controls evoked unanticipated consequences."

In A Date Which Will Live: Pearl Harbor in American Memory, Rosenberg examines the history of the 1945 attacks by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor, as well as the evolution of the public's perception of this event and its meaning in the American consciousness. It is "a brilliantly conceived, carefully organized, and persuasively argued exploration of the way in which the interaction of history and memory, guided and transformed by modern media, can profoundly illuminate cultural values and political controversies," according to Mark Peattie, a reviewer for Historian. It is, said Peter W. Black in Pacific Affairs, "largely jargon-free and is very well grounded in the emerging literature on public memory and culture. It is, in the manner of the best of such work, full of interesting and pungent detail."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Canadian Journal of History, April 1, 2001, Gail D. Triner, review of Financial Missionaries to the World: The Politics and Culture of Dollar Diplomacy, 1900-1930, p. 177; April 1, 2005, June Hopkins, review of A Date Which Will Live: Pearl Harbor in American Memory, p. 143.

Historian, December 22, 2006, Mark Peattie, review of A Date Which Will Live, p. 843.

History: Review of New Books, January 1, 2000, Julian J. Delgaudio, review of Financial Missionaries to the World, p. 54.

Journal of World History, December 1, 2005, "Markets in Historical Contexts: Ideas and Politics in the Modern World," p. 505.

Pacific Affairs, September 22, 2004, Peter W. Black, review of A Date Which Will Live, p. 616.

ONLINE

University of California, Irvine Department of History Web site,http://www.hnet.uci.edu/history/ (April 28, 2008), biographical information about Emily S. Rosenberg.