The Passing of Michael Kammen

Randall Stephens

Michael Kammen

It is with heavy hearts that historians, former students, and others are reporting on the death of the Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Michael Kammen.  He leaves an enormous legacy as an inspiring teacher, mentor, and scholar.

H. Roger Segelken of the Cornell Chronicle writes that Kammen focused "his scholarship at first on the colonial period of American history."  He then "broadened his scope to include legal, cultural and social issues of American history in the 19th and 20th centuries." Kammen's Mystic Chords of Memory: The Transformation of Tradition in American Culture (1991), says Segelken, "helped to create the field of memory studies."  (See a short biography of Kammen here.)

Indeed, Kammen won high praise as a writer. In a New York Times review of Mystic Chords of Memory Thomas Fleming conceded that "not everyone will agree with all his conclusions, but they are presented with superlative style laced with refreshing wit and a refusal to tolerate the occasional fools and scoundrels who populate this patriot's game." (Thomas Fleming, "The Past Is What Catches Up With Us," New York Times, January 12, 1992, BR11.)