Michael Kammen is a professor of American cultural history in the Department of History

Cornell University Department of History

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 at Cornell University

Cornell University

Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...

. He was born in 1936 in Rochester, New York, grew up in the Washington, DC area, and was educated at the George Washington University

George Washington University

The George Washington University is a private, coeducational comprehensive university located in Washington, D.C. in the United States...

 and Harvard University

Harvard University

Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...

 (Ph.D., 1964). He has taught at Cornell since completing his graduate studies at Harvard. He began his career in the 1960s, and won his first renown, as a scholar of the colonial period of American history. But over the last 30 years his scholarship and his teaching interests have broadened to include legal, cultural and social issues of American history of the 19th and 20th centuries as well.

Kammen has been active in organizations advancing the study of history, and served as president of the Organization of American Historians for the 1995-96 year.

Kammen's major works include:

• People of Paradox: An Inquiry Concerning the Origins of American Civilization, which won the Pulitzer Prize
  Pulitzer Prize
  The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
  
   (1973)
• Colonial New York: A History. Millwood, NJ: K+O Press, 1975. ISBN 0195107799
• The Origins of the American Constitution: A Documentary History. New York: Penguin Books, 1986. ISBN 0140087443 (edited by Kammen)
• A Machine That Would Go of Itself: The Constitution in American Culture (1986), which won the Francis Parkman Prize
  Francis Parkman Prize
  The Francis Parkman Prize, named after Francis Parkman, is awarded by the Society of American Historians for the best book in American history each year. Its purpose is to promote literary distinction in historical writing...
  
   and the Henry Adams Prize. In this work, Kammen describes constitutional governance not so much as a machine
  Machine
  A machine manages power to accomplish a task, examples include, a mechanical system, a computing system, an electronic system, and a molecular machine. In common usage, the meaning is that of a device having parts that perform or assist in performing any type of work...
  
  , but rather as an organism
  Organism
  In biology, an organism is any contiguous living system . In at least some form, all organisms are capable of response to stimuli, reproduction, growth and development, and maintenance of homoeostasis as a stable whole.An organism may either be unicellular or, as in the case of humans, comprise...
  
  .
• Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (1991)
• Contested Values: Democracy and Diversity in American Culture (1995)
• American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change and the 20th Century (1999)
• A Time to Every Purpose: The Four Seasons in American Culture (2004)
• Digging Up the Dead: A History of Notable American Reburials (2010) ISBN 9780226423296

External links

• Michael Kammen faculty page