John Mackey
Master Lecturer, Social Sciences
Teaching Interests
U.S. foreign policy; modern European history; colonial and post-colonial history; modern Chinese history; Marx; Freud; and nineteenth-century sociology
Research Interests
Britain and the British empire in the nineteenth century; contemporary U.S. and British politics and foreign policy; the history of dress and fashion; modern Irish history and Irish identity
Selected Publications
Articles
“Practical Knowledge and the New Republic: Osgood Carleton and his Forgotten 1795 Map of Boston.” American Revolutionary Geographies Online.” December 16, 2024.
“People of Northern Ireland May Pay High Price for Johnson’s Political Negligence.” The Globe Post. August 12, 2019.
“Whole UK Will Suffer from Brexit, but People of Northern Ireland May Lose Most,” The Globe Post, March 12, 2019
“From certain war to uncertain peace: Northern Ireland’s Good Friday Agreement turns 20,” The Conversation, April 10, 2018
“When Resignation is Not Punishment Enough,” WBUR, May 30, 2017
“Sanders’ victory: How Bernie ended the Cold War in 2016.” Salon, July 10, 2016
POV: “Brexit Outcome Unlikely to Satisfy Anyone.” BU Today, June 28, 2016
“On the Seventieth Anniversary of the Marshall Mission to China.” We’re History, January 14, 2016
“President Obama’s Prison Visit and the Legacy of the Reagan Years.” We’re History, July 16, 2015
Book Chapters
“‘Think About What You Saw’: The Holocaust and Social Science.” Readings in Social Theory and Modernization. Pearson, 2013
“The Age of Empire.” McGrath and Martin, eds., The Modernization of the Western World: A Society Transformed. M.E. Sharpe, 2011
“Nationalism and Nations.” McGrath and Martin, eds., The Modernization of the Western World: A Society Transformed. M.E. Sharpe, 2011
“The Industrial Revolution.” McGrath and Martin, eds., The Modernization of the Western World: A Society Transformed. M.E. Sharpe, 2011
Reviews
Review of Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War by Howard W. French (Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2021). Impact: the Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Vol. 11, no. 2, Summer, 2022.
Review of Revisionist History Podcast by Malcom Gladwell (The Slate Group, 2016). Impact: the Journal of the Center for Interdisciplinary Teaching and Learning. Vol. 6, no. 2, Summer, 2017.
Review of Nabobs: Empire and Identity in Eighteenth-Century Britain by TillmanW. Nechtman (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History. Vol. 13, no. 1, Spring, 2012.
Recent Conference Presentations
“Inclusive Faculty Hiring Practices: Challenges and Opportunities” (Roundtable Discussion). Presented at AAC&U 2023 Conference on Diversity, Equity, and Student Success. Henderson, NV, March, 2023. Presented collaboratively with Joshua Pederson, Davida Pines, and Meg Tyler.
“Capitalism Comes to Cymru: Mapping Industrialization in Nineteenth-Century Wales.” Presented at Twenty-Eighth Annual Conference on the History of Cartography. Amsterdam, Netherlands, July, 2019.
Teaching Abroad
In the Summer of 2013, I taught a CGS course on the modernization of China at Fudan University in Shanghai, China. My blog, which documented some of my experiences and those of the students, can be found here: http://blogs.bu.edu/cgschina/
Fellowships and Grants
The MacLean Collection, Chicago, IL: The MacLean Collection Map Fellowship, 2018
Boston University: Center for Excellence and Innovation in Teaching Interdisciplinary Course Development Grant, 2014
Awards
Peyton Richter Award for Interdisciplinary Teaching, Boston University, 2016
Janice Thaddeus Teaching Prize, Harvard University, 2004
Donald White Teaching Excellence Award, Boston College, 1997
Morris W. Prince History Award, Dickinson College, 1991