Talk: Culture Wars, Then and Now by Professor Andrew Hartman

• Event Date: Sunday, September 20, 2026
• Time: 1:00 pm–3:00 pm (CDT)
• Location: Knight Auditorium, Spurlock Museum, 600 S. Gregory St., Urbana, IL

• Talk
• Exhibit-Related tag

What we call the culture wars, battles over a range of issues, including how history is taught in public schools, are actually struggles over what it means to be American and the rights that American citizenship entail—struggles that have been a part of American political culture since the 1960s. But in recent years the culture wars have seemed more intense, more violent, more existential than ever. This lecture will be about the culture wars since the 1960s, comparing and contrasting the culture wars of the late twentieth century with our current version. The speaker will offer answers as to why our contemporary culture wars seem worse than ever.

This event is in conjunction with the exhibit Unfinished Revolutions: Living Stories of American Rights, on view through November 8.

Andrew Hartman is Distinguished Professor of History at Illinois State University. He is the author of three books: Education and the Cold War: The Battle for the American School (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008); A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars (University of Chicago Press, 2015; second edition 2019); and Karl Marx in America (University of Chicago Press, 2025), winner of the 2026 Society for US Intellectual History Book Prize. In addition, Hartman co-edited American Labyrinth: Intellectual History for Complicated Times (Cornell University Press, 2019). A two-time Fulbright Scholar, Hartman helps run the Illinois State University History Education Program, committed to training social studies teachers for Illinois public schools.

Image courtesy of Illinois State University News.