History 50:512:480
History Research Seminar: Experiencing Technological Change, 1930-1970s

Honors Program Seminar,  Technology in American Life  

American Business History
Graduate Course 512:475

Readings In American History

Philip Scranton is University Board of Governors Professor, History of Industry and Technology, at Rutgers University, where he works with MA/BA history programs, chairs the RU Camden MA-History program and organizes the Lees History Seminars, the Department’s monthly research discussions. Prof. Scranton also directs the Hagley Museum & Library's research arm, the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society, with responsibility for a seminar series, twice-yearly conferences, short-term grants-in-aid, and annual fellowships in support of dissertation research and writing.

His publications include nine books and forty-five scholarly articles, multiple contributions to museum catalogs, and numerous reviews of books, conferences, and exhibits. Since 1985, he has presented research papers at over 50 international conferences in Europe, Canada, Latin America, and Japan. In 1997, Princeton University Press released his monograph Endless Novelty: Specialty Production and American Industrialization, 1865-1925 (paperback 2000, Japanese translation, 2004). Earlier monographs include Proprietary Capitalism (Cambridge, 1983) and Figured Tapestry (Cambridge, 1989), which received the SHEAR and Taft prizes, respectively. At present, Scranton is editor or co-editor of two book series: Studies in Industry and Society (The Johns Hopkins University Press), and Hagley Perspectives on Business and Society (University of Pennsylvania Press, with Roger Horowitz and Susan Strasser). Forthcoming is: Philip Scranton and Janet Davidson, eds., The Business of Tourism (Penn Press, fall 2006). In 2005, Houghton-Mifflin published a documents and essays textbook he assisted Regina Blaszczyk in preparing: Main Problems in American Business History. In addition, along with serving on the editorial boards of Technology and Culture, The Business History Review, Business History (UK), and Enterprise and Society, Scranton has been president of the Business History Conference and a consultant to a wide range of museum and public history projects, most recently ExplorePAHistory.com. He held the Lindbergh Chair in Aerospace and Aeronautical History at the National Air and Space Museum in 2003-04 and has been an invited guest professor at the École des Hautes Études en Science Sociales (Paris), the University of Toulouse Business School, and the University of San Andreas, Buenos Aires.

Born (1946) in western Pennsylvania, Scranton received undergraduate and graduate degrees in history from the University of Pennsylvania (Ph.D., 1975). He taught at the Philadelphia College of Textiles and Science (1974-84), before joining the faculty at Rutgers-Camden (1984-97), then moving to Georgia, where he served the Georgia Institute of Technology as Kranzberg Professor of the History of Technology and Science for two years, returning to Rutgers in 1999. His current research examines the course of specialty manufacturing in the United States from World War Two through the 1980s with a special focus on Cold War technological innovation (jet propulsion, instrumentation, materials, and aerospace vehicles). In the jet engine case, he is exploring the cross-national contrasts and resonances among engineering development projects in the US, Britain and France, 1940-1970.