Jonathan Strassfeld (CV) is a historian of modern intellectual and social history, focusing on the history of American higher education. His work examines the university as a site of both knowledge production and bureaucratic control, showing how everyday administrative needs and institutional practices play a determinative role in the development of discourse, even in fields as seemingly detached from the quotidian as philosophy. He is currently a Research Historian at Johns Hopkins University, working on a monograph that will cover the institution’s history. His first book, Inventing Philosophy’s Other: Phenomenology in America, received the triennial John Dewey Prize from the Society for US Intellectual History. It is a community study of a geographically disparate group of twentieth century intellectuals that uses mixed methodologies to explain philosophy’s schism into “analytic” and “continental” traditions.
POSITIONS
Lecturer, Johns Hopkins University Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, 2026 –
Research Historian, Johns Hopkins University, 2022 – 2025
Lecturer, Cleveland State University History Department, 2021
Visiting Associate, Harvard University Philosophy Department, 2020-2021
Instructor, University of Rochester History Department, 2016
PUBLICATIONS
Inventing Philosophy’s Other: Phenomenology in America (University of Chicago Press, 2022)
Winner of the John Dewey Prize (triennial), Society for U.S. Intellectual History
Reviews: Los Angeles Review of Books; The Journal of American History; The Review of Metaphysics
“‘I am aware this letter may be offensive’: The Unapologetic Achievements of Ruth Barcan Marcus and Marjorie Glicksman Grene,” Journal of The History of Ideas 83, no. 4 (2022): 579-600.
“American Divide: The Making of ‘Continental Philosophy,’” Modern Intellectual History 17, no. 3 (2020): 833–66.
“Reestablishing Phenomenology in America,” in Sander Verhaegh, ed., American Philosophy and the Intellectual Migration: Pragmatism, Logical Empiricism, Phenomenology, Critical Theory (De Gruyter, 2025).
“Husserl at Harvard: The Origins of American Phenomenology,” in Michela Ferri, Ed., The Reception of Husserlian Phenomenology in North America (Springer, 2019).
AWARDS
John Dewey Prize, Society for U.S. Intellectual History, 2024
Leo Ribuffo Dissertation Prize, Society for U.S. Intellectual History, 2020
Wilson Havelock Coates Book Award, University of Rochester, 2019
Raymond N. Ball Fellowship, University of Rochester, 2018-2019
Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship, University of Rochester, 2017-2018
Edward Peck Curtis, Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student, University of Rochester, 2016
Meyers Graduate Teaching Prize, University of Rochester History Department, 2016
Henry F. May Award, Society for US Intellectual History, 2016
Dexter Perkins Prize, University of Rochester History Department, 2015
Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull Fellowship, University of Rochester, 2012-2015
Class of 1869 Prize in Ethics and Social Philosophy, Princeton University, 2009
CONTACT
Jonathan Strassfeld (He/Him)
jstrass6@jh.edu
University of Chicago Press Author Page
Google Scholar Profile
eBird Profile