Sparrow, Bartholomew H. 1959- (Bartholomew Sparrow)

PERSONAL:

Born August 2, 1959, in Brunswick, ME; son of Edward G. (a professor) and Lydia Sparrow; married Polly Lanning, May 11, 2002. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: Dartmouth College, A.B., 1981; University of Texas at Austin, A.M., 1985; University of Chicago, Ph.D., 1991. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Roman Catholic. Hobbies and other interests: Soccer, bicycling, running, art.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Austin, TX. Office—Department of Government, Burdine 536, University of Texas at Austin, Austin, TX 78712-1087. E-mail—bhs@mail.la.utexas.edu.

CAREER:

University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, lecturer, 1989, 1991; University of Texas at Austin, Austin, assistant professor, 1991-99, associate professor, 1999—. Harvard University, fellow at Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics, and Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, 1996; conference participant. Hostelling International, member of board of directors, 1996—.

MEMBER:

American Political Science Association, Social Science History Association, Academy of Political Science, Western Political Science Association, Policy History Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Harry S Truman Library Institute, research grant, 1988, Scholar's Award, 1992; American Political Science Association, Franklin L. Burdette Award and best paper award, both 1991, for "Raising Taxes and Going into Debt: A Resource Dependence Perspective of Public Finance in the 1940s," and Leonard D. White Award, 1992, for best doctoral dissertation in public administration.

WRITINGS:

From the Outside In: World War II and the American State, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1996.

Uncertain Guardians: The News Media as a Political Institution, Johns Hopkins University Press (Baltimore, MD), 1999.

(Editor and author of introduction, with Roderick P. Hart) Politics, Discourse, and American Society: New Agendas in Political Communication, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 2001.

(Under name Bartholomew Sparrow; editor, with Sanford Levinson, and contributor) The Louisiana Purchase and American Expansion, 1803-1898, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 2005.

(Under name Bartholomew Sparrow) The Insular Cases and the Emergence of American Empire, University Press of Kansas (Lawrence, KS), 2006.

Contributor to The Presidency and the Political System, 4th edition, edited by Michael Nelson, CQ Press (Washington, DC), 1994; The Politics of Strategic Adjustment, edited by Gerald Ruggie, Columbia University Press (New York, NY), 1998; Shaped by War and Trade: International Influences on American Politics, edited by Ira Katznelson and Martin Shefter, Princeton University Press, 2001; A Reader's Companion to Congress, edited by Julian Zelizer, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2004; and The Public Response to Controversial Supreme Court Cases, edited by Mel Urofsky, CQ Press, 2005. Contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including Political Research Quarterly, American Political Science Review, Theory and Society, Political Science and Politics, Review of Communication, Presidential Studies Quarterly, International Journal of Public Opinion Research, Rhetoric and Politics, Journal of Politics, Ethics, and Contemporary Sociology.

SIDELIGHTS:

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 once told CA: "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."

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. As he pointed out, "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."

Sparrow moves across a broad spectrum of subjects. His first book, From the Outside In: World War II and the American State, examines U.S. public administration in the 1940s. Uncertain Guardians: The News Media as a Political Institution addresses the role of the U.S. news media in the contemporary political system. "The subjects of my writing have been of my own choosing," Sparrow commented. "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.

"I'd always been interested in politics and government, and being an academic seemed to be the best way for me to study, teach, and write about different topics in government and public policy. 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. I am now writing about the U.S. territories, beginning with the old Northwest Territory and continuing to this day with Puerto Rico, Guam, American Samoa, the U.S. Virgin Islands, and the Northern Marianas, all of which are an integral part of the United States. Nor could I predict what I'll be working on five years from now."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Political Science Review, June, 1997, Edwin Amenta, review of From the Outside In: World War II and the American State, p. 469; June, 2000, Kathleen Hall Jamieson, review of Uncertain Guardians: The News Media as a Political Institution, p. 468.

Historian, spring, 1999, John Braeman, review of From the Outside In, p. 689.

Library Journal, May 1, 1999, Steven Anderson, review of Uncertain Guardians, p. 97.

Journal of American History, June, 1997, Bruce J. Schulman, review of From the Outside In, p. 291.

Public Opinion Quarterly, spring, 2001, Scott L. Althaus, review of Uncertain Guardians, p. 146.