Russell Johnson

Contact Details

Room 2S1, Arts 1 (Burns) Building
Tel 64 3 479 8621
Email russell.johnson@otago.ac.nz
Teaching: HIST 102, HIST 212, HIST 213, HIST 310, HIST 402

Academic Qualifications

1983: BS (History and Mathematics) University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh
1987: MA (History) University of Iowa
1996: PhD (U.S. History) University of Iowa

Research Interests

Dr. Johnson's research focuses on the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth century United States. His first book examined the Civil War's impact on urban-industrial development in the United States. He is currently working on a project which will recast U.S. history from the end of the First World War (1918) to the inauguration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1933) as the period of “Clara Bow’s America,” named for the most popular movie star of the late-1920s. Before joining the University of Otago history faculty, Dr. Johnson taught for five years at Bilkent University in Ankara Turkey.

Select Publications

• “Clara Bow in Free to Love (1925): Feature Films and Eugenics in the 1920s.” Australasian Journal of American Studies 27 (July 2008): 1-15.
• Warriors into Workers: The Civil War and the Formation of Urban-Industrial Society in a Northern City (New York: Fordham University Press, 2003).
• 'Dancing Mothers: The Chautauqua Movement in Twentieth-Century American Popular Culture.' American Studies International 39 (June 2001): 53-70.
• 'The Civil War Generation: Military Service and Mobility in Dubuque, Iowa, 1860-1870.' Journal of Social History 32 (Summer 1999): 791-820.
  
  

Areas of Research Supervision

Dr. Johnson can work with students interested in writing long essays and theses on most topics in United States history, especially U.S. social and cultural history and the period 1860 to the present.

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