Casey N. Blake

Casey Nelson Blake works on modern U.S. intellectual and cultural history, with an emphasis on the relationship between artistic modernism, cultural criticism and democratic citizenship.  His publications include Beloved Community:  The Cultural Criticism of Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, and Lewis Mumford, The Arts of Democracy: Art, Public Culture, and the State,  The Armory Show at 100: Modernism and Revolution and At the Center: American Thought and Culture in the Mid-Twentieth Century (co-authored with Daniel Borus and Howard Brick).  He is currently at work on a cultural biography of the writer and critic Paul Goodman.

Professor Blake came to Columbia in 1999 as founding Director of the Center for American Studies after directing American Studies programs at Indiana University and Washington University, and teaching at Reed College.  As Director, Professor Blake oversaw the development of a civic engagement curriculum within the Center, as well as the “Freedom and Citizenship” program that provides humanities education and college mentoring to under-served high school students.