2020 Metcalf Award Recipient: Seth Blumenthal

Like most college students, Terriers are often urged to “get involved” and “make a difference in the world.” Seth Blumenthal makes it mandatory in his class Writing, Research, and Inquiry: Educated Electorate.

“Three or four weeks into the semester, they are supposed to start their activism, and they are required to do that for four weeks, three hours a week,” says Blumenthal (GRS’13), a College of Arts and Sciences senior lecturer in the Writing Program. His students volunteer with political campaigns, nonprofits, and other groups, then present a research paper on the issue at hand. Finally they must convert that paper into a newspaper-style op-ed for the general reader.

Blumenthal “has been a leader in bringing experiential learning to our classes, a valued mentor of graduate students, and an activist on behalf of his colleagues—all while he has carved out a significant and impressive profile as a scholar,” wrote Chris Walsh (CAS’95, GRS’00), a CAS associate professor of English and Writing Program director, in recommending him for the Metcalf Award.

Blumenthal joined BU as a graduate writing fellow in 2009 and earned a  doctorate in history here. He became a full-time lecturer in 2013. He brings his own interests and research to his teaching, with classes like Imagining Vietnam: The Big Muddy in American Culture, Marijuana in American History, and High Stakes: Creating Social Equity in the Massachusetts Cannabis Industry, which he cotaught this year with Ian Mashiter, a Questrom School of Business senior lecturer.

In his book Children of the Silent Majority: Youth Politics and the Rise of the Republican Party, 1964-1984 (University of Kansas Press, 2019), based on his doctoral dissertation and extensive additional research, Blumenthal explores the outreach by Republicans and conservatives to young voters in the 1960s and 1970s. The book won the 2019 James P. Hanlan Book Award, the only annual book prize given by the New England Historical Association.

“For students, I think the most important part is to reflect on these things as the history of now,” he says, “to understand that the past has really shaped who they are and the world they’re inheriting, and they’re better off understanding that so they can have some agency.”

“He connects writing to doing,” says Sarah Madsen Hardy, Writing Program associate director and a CAS master lecturer, “putting students in the position to have something they really want to say and giving them a chance to see how what they write can make an impact on the world.”

From BU Today, May 12, 2020. Read the full story by Joel Brown.