Oscar Handlin - Biography

Oscar Handlin (September 29, 1915 in Brooklyn, New York - September 20, 2011 in Cambridge, Massachusetts) was an American historian. As a professor of history at Harvard University for over 50 years, he directed 80 PhD dissertations and helped promote social and ethnic history. Handlin won the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1952 with The Uprooted.

Biography

Handlin was born in Brooklyn, the oldest of four children of Russian-Jewish immigrants, Joseph and Ida Handlin, who ran a grocery story in Brooklyn, New York. In 1934, Handlin graduated at Brooklyn College and received a M.A. from Harvard University one year later. Between 1936 and 1938, he taught history at Brooklyn College. In 1940, he received his PhD from Harvard, where he studied with Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr. Along with Dr. Schlesinger, he was among the first Jewish scholars appointed to full professorship at Harvard.

His work centered around the topic of immigrants in the U.S., and their influence on culture.

Handlin co-authored several books with his first wife, historian Mary Flug. The couple had three children, Joanna Handlin Smith, who later became an expert in Chinese history and literature; David Handlin, an architect; and Ruth Handlin Manley, a social worker. Mary Flug Handlin died in 1976. Oscar Handlin later married historian Lilian Bombach.

He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Administrator

Handlin was very active as a scholarly organizer and administrator. In the Harvard history department he helped create the Center for the Study of the History of Liberty in America and directed it 1958-67; he also chaired the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History from 1965-73. From 1962-66, he was a top official of the United States Board of Foreign Scholarships, which gives out Fulbright scholarships). He served on the board of overseers of Brandeis University and was a trustee of the New York Public Library. He was Harvard's head librarian from 1979 to 1984 and acting director of the Harvard University Press in 1972.

Positions

Immigration

Among Handlin's many important contributions was his pioneering work on immigration to America. In his Pulitzer Prize winning The Uprooted (1951), he opens with the declaration: "Once I thought to write a history of the immigrants in America. Then I discovered that the immigrants were American history."

American slavery

Oscar Handlin argued that racism was a by-product of slavery, and that the main focus was on the fact that slaves, like indentured servants, were regarded as inferior because of their status, not necessarily because of their race.

Bibliography

• Boston's Immigrants, 1790–1865 (1941, rev. and enl. ed. 1959)
• Commonwealth (1947, together with his wife, Mary Flug Handlin)
• The Uprooted: The Epic Story of the Great Migrations That Made the American People (1951, 2d enl. ed. 1973)
• Adventure in Freedom; 300 Years of Jewish Life in America (1954)
• Chance or Destiny: Turning Points in American History (1955), Little, Brown, & Co.
• Race and Nationality in American Life (1957)
• Al Smith and His America (1958)
• The Newcomers: Negroes and Puerto Ricans in a Changing Metropolis (1959)
• The Dimensions of Liberty (1961)
• The Americans: A New History of the People of the United States (1963)
• A Continuing Task: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 1914—1964 (1964)
• Occasions for Love, and Other Essays at Recollection (Poetry, 1977)
• Truth In History (1979)
• From the Outer World (1997, with Lilian Handlin)

About Handlin

• Bushman, Richard L. et al., eds. Uprooted Americans: Essays to Honor Oscar Handlin (1980)
• Rothman, David J. "The Uprooted: Thirty Years Later," Reviews in American History 10 (September 1982): 311-19 in JSTOR
• Ueda, Reed. "Immigration and the moral criticism of American history: The vision of Oscar Handlin," Canadian Review of American Studies, 1990, Vol. 21 Issue 2, pp 183–202
• Vecoli, Rudolph J. "Contadini in Chicago: A Critique of The Uprooted," Journal of American History 5 (December 1964): 404-17, critique of Handlin in JSTOR