New York University

Historian and Gallatin Professor Kimberly Phillips-Fein has research and teaching interests in American political, business, and labor history, the history of economic thought, and the role of economic ideas in the rise of conservatism. Her recent course offerings include Contemporary Political Economy, American Capitalism in the 20th Century, and Business and Economy in American History: From Farms to Factories.

“I like teaching history because we live inside of it every day,” she says. “History is the story of how things came to be, though people often think of it in terms of events that took place in a distant, primordial past. I try to make history come alive for students, to show how the debates that stirred people and the actions that they took have shaped the world of today. Studying history can also give students a sense of hope for the future,” she continues. “Recognizing how much has changed helps students to imagine that they can be part of changing history.”

Phillips-Fein received her B.A. in American history from the University of Chicago and her Ph.D. from Columbia University. Her dissertation, “Top-Down Revolution: Businessmen, Intellectuals and Politicians Against the New Deal,” won Columbia’s prestigious Bancroft Dissertation Award and was also honored as a finalist for the Krooss Prize from the Business History Conference.

Prior to joining the Gallatin faculty, Phillips-Fein held a fellowship from the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and also wrote for publications such as the Nation and Dissent. Her first book, Invisible Hands: The Making of the Conservative Movement from the New Deal to Reagan, will be published by W.W. Norton in 2009. The book, which grew out of her dissertation and comprehensive post-doctoral research, focuses on the role that prominent businesspeople and economic ideas played in the rise of the conservative political movement.

“My interactions with students at Gallatin have certainly informed the way I wrote the book,” she shares. “I love the intellectual energy that they bring to their work, constantly questioning and looking for new connections between texts and areas of study. The School demands a great deal of its undergraduate students, but they rise to what’s being asked of them, and it is very exciting to be part of that process of self-direction and self-discovery.”

Phillips-Fein notes that NYU’s location provides a rich setting for students to make meaningful connections. “It’s especially exciting to study history in New York City, where you can walk down the street and think about all the events that have happened here: the way the Village looked before urban renewal, the activism that has occurred in our own Washington Square Park. It’s also interesting to teach the history of labor and the economy in a city that is so divided between rich and poor people, and where issues of wealth, poverty, and work are so often at the forefront of students’ minds.”

On the subject of the city’s economic history, Phillips-Fein has received two major research fellowships this year: the Stephen Charney Vladeck Junior Faculty Fellowship and a Humanities Initiative Faculty Fellowship. Her project will focus on the NYC financial crisis of the 1970s. “In 1975, New York City almost had to declare bankruptcy, which it was able to avert only by dramatically reorganizing its fiscal life,” she explains. “The story is partly about the role of businesspeople in the city’s government, but I’m also interested in how working-class people understood the crisis and how it altered their politics. It’s about the transformation of a city whose culture was dominated by the working class to the expensive, stratified city we live in today.”

As with her research, in her classroom Phillips-Fein focuses on the narrative of economic history, a method that students studying multiple disciplines can appreciate. “In typical economics classes, students learn about a set of abstract models for thinking about the economy,” she states. “In my classes, we learn that the way the economy actually developed depended on ideas and on politics as well. That opens up a whole new way of seeing economic life: as another space of meaning and possibility, rather than dry numbers or graphs.”