Timeline – 1944 – Merle Curti’s Pulitzer Prize

U.S. historian Merle Curti, one of Turner’s last graduate students at Harvard, joined the UW faculty in 1942. He was a pioneer in the fields of social and intellectual history and peace studies and co-founded the American Studies Association. His book, The Growth of American Thought (1943), won the Pulitzer Prize in History in 1944.

Among his many other accomplishments, Merle Curti served as president of the American Historical Association in 1953-1954. He taught in our department until 1968 and remained actively engaged with the department and the profession until his death in 1996.

Merle Curti’s legacy lives on in our annual Merle Curti Lecture Series and the Merle Curti Teaching Fellowship. A bibliography of his writings is available on the AHA website.

Source: UW-Madison Faculty Document 1202, 6 May 1996, Memorial Resolution of the Faculty.