KRISTOFFER SMEMO
ksmemo[at]g.ucla.edu
CURRICULUM VITAE
EMPLOYMENT
2024—present: Lecturer, Institute for Labor & Employment Relations, UCLA
2019— 2024: Lecturer, College of Arts and Sciences, Washington University in Saint Louis
2018—2019: Lecturer, Department of History and Labor Studies Program, California State University, Dominguez Hills
EDUCATION
Ph.D., History, University of California, Santa Barbara
M.A., History, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
M.A., Political Science, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
B.A., History and Political Science, Hamline University
SCHOLARLY PUBLICATIONS
Book
2024: Making Republicans Liberal: Social Struggle and the Politics of Compromise (University of Pennsylvania Press, Politics and Culture in Modern America series)
Refereed Articles
2017: “Conflict and Consensus: The Steel Strike of 1959 and the Anatomy of the New Deal Order,” co-authored with Samir Sonti and Gabriel Winant, Critical Historical Studies 4, no. 1 (Spring): 39-73
2015: “The Little People’s Century: Industrial Pluralism, Economic Development, and the Emergence of Liberal Republicanism in California, 1942-1946,” Journal of American History 102, no. 4 (March): 1166-89
2014: “A ‘New Dealized’ Grand Old Party: Labor and the Emergence of Liberal Republicanism in Minneapolis, 1937-1939,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 11, no. 2 (Summer): 35-59
Book Chapters
2019: “The Making of ‘Liberal’ Republicans During the New Deal Order,” in Beyond the New Deal Order, ed. Gary Gerstle, Nelson Lichtenstein, and Alice O’Connor (University of Pennsylvania Press)
2019: “Managing a Regime in Crisis: The Twilight of Neoliberalism and the Politics of Economic Recovery during the First Year of the Obama Administration,” in Looking Back on President Barack Obama’s Legacy, ed. Wilbur Rich (Palgrave Macmillan)
Review Essays and Other Writings
2021: “Taft-Hartley, Working-Class Organization, and the Politics of Accommodation” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History 18, no. 3 (September): 126-30
2021: “Geographies of Solidarity,” New Labor Forum 30, no. 1 (Winter): 114-16
2019: “Book Review: Robert Chiles, The Revolution of ’28: Al Smith, American Progressivism, and the Coming of the New Deal,” American Political Thought 8, no. 4 (Fall): 606-10
2017: “Making Working-Class Comix,” Public Historian 39, no. 3 (August): 96-99
2015: “Conceptualizing the Path of Black Politics: Deton J. Brooks, Gunnar Myrdal, and Detroit, 1944,” Society for U.S. Intellectual History, June 30
2014: “‘Let’s See You Do Better’: Black Flag and the Cinema of Transgression,” Society for U.S. Intellectual History, July 15
2014: “Black Flag’s Electric Church, or, How Working Men Rock,” Society for U.S. Intellectual History, July 1
2014: “My Rules, My War: Black Flag and American Working-Class Thought in the 1980s,” Society for U.S. Intellectual History, June 24
2014: “The Myth of the Moderate Republican,” Jacobin, January 28
Work in Progress
“Black Flag’s Amerika: A Countercultural History of Right”
FELLOWSHIPS, GRANTS, AND AWARDS
2023—24: Literacies for Life and Career grant, College of Arts & Sciences, Washington University
2017—18: Visiting Fellow, Center for Work, Labor, and Democracy, UCSB
2017: Dorothy Foehr Huck Research Travel Award, Pennsylvania State University
2017: Richard K. Mayberry Award for Scholarly Excellence, UCSB Department of History
2015—16: University of California Regents’ Dissertation Fellowship
2016: Frost Prize for Best Work in Political Economy, UCSB Department of History
2015: Rockefeller Archive Center Grant-in-Aid
2014: Humanities and Social Sciences Research Grant, UCSB Graduate Division
2014: Bordin-Gillette Researcher Fellowship, University of Michigan
2013: Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library Research Grant
2012, 2015: History Associates Graduate Fellowship, UCSB Department of History
COURSES DESIGNED AND TAUGHT
Washington University in St. Louis
Department of History
Freedom, Citizenship, and the Making of American Culture,
Poverty and Social Reform in American History
America in the Age of Inequality: The Gilded Age & the Progressive Era
American Culture Studies Program
Power and Protest in Modern America
No Future: Punk and the End of the Twentieth Century
Interdisciplinary Program in the Humanities
Modern Political Thought
Modern Economic Thought
University College
Introduction to the History of the United States
California State University, Dominguez Hills
Department of History
History of the United States
Modern World History
Labor Studies Program
Labor and the Environment
Labor Studies Practicum
Pennsylvania State University, World Campus
Department of Labor and Employment Relations
History of Work in America (online)
University of California, Santa Barbara
Department of Feminist Studies
Women’s Labors, Fall 2016
Department of History
United States History, 1929-1959
Labor Studies Research and Internship Seminar
STUDENT RESEARCH SUPERVISION
Washington University in St. Louis
Primary Advisor
“Children of Light”: Rabbinic Interventions in Black-Jewish Relations, 1934-1945,” Latin Honors Thesis, American Culture Studies, 2021 – 2022
“New Deal Propaganda Films,” Senior Honors Thesis, History Department, 2020 - 2021
“The Newport Mansions and the Making of American Bourgeois Culture,” Latin Honors Thesis, American Culture Studies, 2020 – 2021
Second Reader
“The Short and Long Legacies of the Kennedy Assassination,” Senior Honors Thesis, History Department, 2021 - 2022
“Partisan Debate, Calls for Unity, and Roosevelt’s Popularity During the World War II Elections,” Senior Honors Thesis, History Department, 2021 - 2022
“‘We Kept the City Alive’: Teamsters, Tenants, and the Soul of St. Louis,” Senior Honors Thesis, History Department, 2020 - 2021
“A ‘Storm of Controversy’: Anti-Abortion Activism, Partisan Politics, and the Mexico City Policy,” Senior Honors Thesis, History Department. 2020 - 2021
INVITED TALKS
2022: “From the Rouge to the White House: Labor and the Transformation of American Democracy in The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit,” UC-Santa Barbara, May 20
2018: “Rust and Revolt: Liberal Republicans and the Crisis of Capitalist Democracy in the 1960s,” Tamiment Library Cold War Seminar Series, New York University, October 11
2018:“Whose City? Urban Politics, Governance, and Local Democracy after 1968,” 1968/2018: Cities on the Edge series, Princeton-Mellon Initiative in Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities, March 26
2017: “Thinking About the History of ‘New Dealized’ Republicans in the Age of Trump,” Paterno Library, Pennsylvania State University, August 4.
2015: “The Human Problem: Industrial Peace and the Liberal Republican Civil Rights Agenda During World War Two,” Colloquium in Work, Labor and Political Economy, University of California, Santa Barbara, February 13
CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONS
2022: “‘Watch His Right Hand’: Punk Renderings of the New Left in the 1980s, Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, New Orleans, January 6
2019:“The Last Republican Keynesians: Deindustrialization and the Eclipse of the Senate’s Liberal Republican Bloc in the 1970s,” Remaking American Political History Conference, Purdue University, June 6
2019: “‘Revolt of the City’: Working-Class Mobilization and the Politics of Republican Accommodation in the 1930s,” Labor and Working-Class History Association Conference, May 9
2017: “The 1970s and the End of Rockefeller Republicanism,” Annual Meeting of the American Historical Association, Denver, CO, January 5
2016: “Buffalo, New York, 1971: Black Power, the Building Trades, and the End of ‘Rockefeller Republicanism,’” Policy History Conference, Nashville, TN, June 2
2015: “Holding the Balance of Power: The Black Vote, The Republican Party, and the Politics of Coalition Building in the 1940s,” Beyond the New Deal Order Conference, University of California, Santa Barbara, September 26
2015: “Productivity, Prices, and Politics: Reconsidering the 1959 Steel Strike,” Labor and Working-Class History Association Conference, Washington D.C., May 28
2014: “Capital Flight and Civil Rights: The Republican Idea of a National Economy During the Eisenhower Administration,” Policy History Conference, Columbus, OH, June 5
2013: “Planning for Peace: Republican Economic Development and the Intellectual Roots of Postwar American Capitalism,” Society for U.S. Intellectual History Conference, University of California, Irvine, November 3
2013: “Labor and Liberal Republicanism: Making a Moderate Opposition to the New Deal Order,” Labor and Working-Class History Association Conference, New York, June 4
2013: “Racial Modernization: California Civil Rights and Republican Economic Development During and After World War Two,” Southern Labor Studies Association Conference, New Orleans, LA, March 3
2012: “The Contested Terrain of Liberalism: Labor and the Rise of Liberal Republicanism in Minneapolis, 1937-1938,” Annual Meeting of the Organization of American Historians, Milwaukee, WI, April 20