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| Peter Novick | |
|---|---|
| Name | Peter Novick |
| Birth date | June 6, 1934 |
| Birth place | Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Death date | October 19, 2012 |
| Death place | Chicago, Illinois, United States |
| Occupation | Historian, professor, author |
| Notable works | The Holocaust in American Life; That Noble Dream |
| Alma mater | University of Chicago; University of Chicago (PhD) |
| Employer | University of Chicago |
Peter Novick was an American historian and academic known for influential, often controversial studies of historiography, memory, and the Holocaust. His scholarship engaged with figures, institutions, and debates across modern intellectual history, historiography, and Jewish studies, challenging prevailing narratives about historical conscience, professionalization, and collective remembrance. Novick's work provoked discussion among historians, journalists, and public intellectuals, and intersected with debates involving major universities, publishers, and cultural institutions.
Novick was born in Chicago and raised in a milieu that connected him to the Jewish communities of Chicago, Illinois, and the broader Midwestern Jewish experience. He studied at the University of Chicago, where he earned undergraduate and doctoral degrees and encountered intellectual currents associated with the Chicago School (sociology), the New Criticism, and debates stemming from the work of scholars such as John Hope Franklin, Hannah Arendt, Richard Hofstadter, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and C. Wright Mills. His doctoral training placed him alongside contemporaries influenced by the methodological legacies of Charles A. Beard, Henry Steele Commager, and the institutional contexts of the American Historical Association and the Chicago History Museum.
Novick joined the faculty of the University of Chicago where he held appointments in history and engaged with centers and programs including the Committee on Social Thought, the Department of History at the University of Chicago, and affiliated seminars linking to institutions like the Institute for Advanced Study and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He taught graduate and undergraduate courses that connected to the historiographical traditions of Leopold von Ranke, Marc Bloch, and Fernand Braudel, while participating in professional networks such as the Modern Language Association, the Organization of American Historians, and the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic. Novick gave lectures and visiting professorships at venues including Harvard University, Yale University, Princeton University, Columbia University, Stanford University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Michigan, Cornell University, University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, Northwestern University, Johns Hopkins University, Duke University, University of Wisconsin–Madison, New York University, Rutgers University, Temple University, Oxford University, Cambridge University, and international seminars tied to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the University of Toronto.
Novick's major books include That Noble Dream: The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession (1988) and The Holocaust in American Life (1999). That Noble Dream traced debates over objectivity and professional standards through figures such as Herbert Baxter Adams, James Harvey Robinson, Charles A. Beard, Carl Becker, and institutions including the American Historical Association and the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. The book engaged controversies involving William James, John Dewey, Max Weber, Georg Simmel, and the methodological legacies of Positivism and Pragmatism as they influenced historiographical practice. The Holocaust in American Life examined how American public culture, media, politicians, and organizations such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, the American Jewish Committee, and American Jewish Congress shaped memory of the Holocaust, critiquing narratives promoted by figures including Elie Wiesel, Simon Wiesenthal, Anne Frank, Raul Hilberg, and institutions like Yad Vashem and the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Novick's essays and reviews engaged debates about memory studies and intersected with works by George Mosse, Dominick LaCapra, Erik Erikson, Benedict Anderson, Pierre Nora, Seymour Lipset, Stanley Hoffmann, Samuel Huntington, Noam Chomsky, Hannah Arendt, Richard Hofstadter, Tony Judt, Iris Marion Young, Michael Ignatieff, Judith Butler, and Zygmunt Bauman.
Novick's scholarship generated strong responses across academic and public spheres. That Noble Dream won critical acclaim, influencing discussions among historians associated with E. H. Carr, Georges Cuvier-style debates about historical method, and scholars at journals like the American Historical Review, Journal of American History, Past & Present, History Workshop Journal, and The Historical Journal. The Holocaust in American Life provoked debate with critics and defenders among intellectuals and institutions, prompting responses from Elie Wiesel, Deborah Lipstadt, David S. Wyman, Deborah E. Lipstadt, Deborah Lipstadt, Seymour M. Hersh, Michael Berenbaum, Daniel J. Goldhagen, Saul Friedländer, Benny Morris, Ariel Dorfman, Ronald Suny, Norman Finkelstein, Richard J. Evans, Christopher Browning, Lawrence Langer, Gershom Scholem, Isaiah Berlin, Richard Evans, David Cesarani, Martin Gilbert, Ian Kershaw, Richard Overy, Timothy Snyder, Orlando Figes, Stephen J. Whitfield, Alice Kessler-Harris, Ellen Schrecker, and journals such as The New York Review of Books, The Atlantic, The New Republic, Slate, The New York Times Book Review, and The Washington Post.
Novick influenced subsequent work in historiography and memory studies by prompting scholars at institutions like Columbia University, Princeton University, Harvard University, Yale University, University of California, Berkeley, University of Michigan, and Hebrew University of Jerusalem to reassess professional norms and public commemoration. His critiques shaped curricular debates involving the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, university departments, museum studies programs, and documentary filmmakers associated with Ken Burns-style projects and public broadcasters such as PBS and BBC.
Novick lived much of his life in Chicago and was connected to local institutions like the University of Chicago and the Jewish Theological Seminary community events. He engaged with colleagues including Richard J. Evans, Tony Judt, Avishai Margalit, Michael Walzer, Lawrence D. Freedman, Edward Said, Isaiah Berlin, and Leslie Fiedler in seminars and conferences. He died in Chicago on October 19, 2012, leaving a body of work that continues to be discussed by scholars at the American Historical Association, the Modern Language Association, and international conferences in Jerusalem, London, Paris, Berlin, Rome, Moscow, Beijing, and Tokyo.
Category:1934 births Category:2012 deaths Category:American historians Category:Historians of the Holocaust Category:University of Chicago faculty