Curriculum Vitae
Robert W. Cherny
Professor emeritus of History, San Francisco State University
(for a pdf version of my full c.v., see below)
Education
Columbia University, 1965-72: Ph.D., 1972; M.A., 1967
University of Michigan (Ann Arbor), Interuniversity Consortium for Political Research, summer 1968: advanced study
University of Nebraska (Lincoln), 1961-65: B.A. with distinction, 1965
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2024.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2023.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2017. You can find excerpts of each chapter at Project Muse.
Edited with Mary Ann Irwin and Ann Marie Wilson. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2011.
Edited with William Issel and Kieran Taylor. Piscataway, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2004.
Hoboken: Wiley, 1997.
With William Issel. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986.
Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1985. Reprint edn., Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1994.
With William Issel. San Francisco: Presidio, Port, and Pacific Metropolis. San Francisco: Boyd and Fraser Publishing Company, 1981.
Populism, Progressivism, and the Transformation of Nebraska Politics, 1885-1915. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press for the Center for Great Plains Studies, 1981.
Textbooks
With Carol Berkin, James Gormly, and Christopher Miller. Cengage Learning, AP edition, 2017; 7th edn., Cengage, 2015; 6th edn., Wadsworth, 2012; 1st-5th edns., Houghton Mifflin, 1995, 1999, 2003, 2006, 2008.
With Gretchen Lemke-Santangelo and Richard Griswold del Castillo. Originally published by Houghton Mifflin, 2nd edition by Cengage. Now out of print but we have made it available through open access. Click on the cover to open the link.
Journal Articles and Anthology Chapters (some are available below as pdf):
"The Party's Over: Former Communist Party Members in the San Francisco Bay Area," Post-Cold War Revelations in the American Communist Party: Citizens, Revolutionaries, and Spies, ed. by Vernon Pedersen, James Ryan, and Katherine Sibley. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2021.
"Seattle/Seiatel': 'The American Commune' in the Soviet Union." Online at http://depts.washington.edu/labhist/strike/seattle_commune.shtml
"San Francisco's New-Deal Murals in Long-term Perspective: Controversy, Neglect, and Restoration." California History 97 (February 2020): 3-32.
"A New Letter on the 1906 Earthquake and Fire." The Argonaut 30 (Jan-Feb. 2019): 34-41.
"A Longitudinal Study of Three Homesteader Families in Marshall County, Kansas." Great Plains Quarterly 38 (Fall 2018): 335-356.
“Harry Bridges’s Australia, Australia’s Harry Bridges.” Frontiers of Labor: Comparative Histories of the United States and Australia, ed. by Greg Passmore and Shelton Stromquist. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2018.
“The Controversy at Coit Tower, 1934.” The Argonaut 28 (Summer 2017): 68-91.
“Reflections on Revolution, the Constitution, and Constitutional Revolutions in the United States.” Les Constitutions: des revolutions à l’épreuve du temps aux Etats-Unis et en Europe / Constitutions: On-Going Revolutions in the U.S. and Europe [conference proceedings], ed. by Marie Bolton and Marie-Elisabeth Baudoin. Editions du Centre Michel de L’Hospital. Paris: Librairie générale de droit et de jurisprudence, 2017. Pp. 311-316.
With Seth Bernstein. “Searching for the Soviet Dream: Prosperity and Disillusionment on the Soviet Seattle Agricultural Commune, 1922-1927.” Agricultural History 88 (2014): 22-44.
“The Evolution of San Francisco’s Labor History.” California History 91 (Winter 2014): 64-71.
“"William Jennings Bryan and the Cross of Gold Speech," National Recording Registry, Library of Congress, 2014. online at https://www.loc.gov/programs/static/national-recording-preservation-board/documents/WilliamJenningsBryan.pdf
Die Vereinigten Staaten im Jahre 1913” (The United States in 2013). Translated to German by Kirsten E. Lehmann. In Vorkrieg (Before the War), ed. by Johannes Piepenbrink. Aus Politik und Zeitgeschichte 63:12 (March 18, 2013): 28-33. Subsequently included in an e-book anthology, 100 Jahre Beginn des Ersten Weltkriegs. Bonn, Germany: Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, 2014.
“Direct Democracy and Legislative Dysfunction: California Politics Since 1978.” Siècles, la revue du centre d'histoire "espaces et cultures" 37 (2013). Online at http://siecles.revues.org/
"The Communist Party in California, 1935-1940: From the Political Margins to the Mainstream and Back." American Communist History 9 (2010): 3-33.
"Anticommunist Networks and Labor: The Pacific Coast in the 1930s." Labor's Cold War: Local Politics in a Global Context, ed. by Shelton Stromquist. Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2008. Pp. 17-48.
"The California State University and the State's Fiscal Crisis of the Early 1990s." La Californie: Périphérie ou laboratoire? [conference proceedings] ed. by Annick Foucrier and Antoine Coppolani. Paris: L'Harmattan, 2004. Pp. 213-226.
"Prelude to the Popular Front: The Communist Party in California, 1931-1935." American Communist History 1 (2002): 5-37.
"Constructing a Radical Identity: History, Memory, and the Seafaring Stories of Harry Bridges." Pacific Historical Review 70 (2001): 571-600.
"Longshoremen of San Francisco Bay, 1849-1960." Dock Workers: International Explorations in Comparative Labor History, 1790-1970 [conference proceedings], ed. by Sam Davies et al. 2 vols. Aldershot, Hampshire (UK): Ashgate Publishing, Ltd., 2000. I: 102-140.
"Harry Bridges," part of "Thirty at Thirty" [special thirtieth-anniversary issue devoted to the thirty men and women who had the greatest influence on California government and politics in the 20th century]. California Journal 30 (November 1999): 18-19.
"Politics." Researching Western History: Topics in the Twentieth Century, ed. by Gerald D. Nash and Richard W. Etulain. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1997. Pp. 83-118.
"Introduction," The Cross of Gold: Speech Delivered Before the National Democratic Convention at Chicago, July 9, 1896, by William Jennings Bryan. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1996. Pp. 1-13. Reprinted as "William Jennings Bryan and His 'Cross of Gold' Speech." Iowa Heritage Illustrated 84 (2003): 110-113.
"Forward" and, with Ellen DuBois, guest editor. Woman Suffrage: The View from the Pacific, special issue of Pacific Historical Review, 69 (2000): 537-706.
"William Jennings Bryan and the Historians." Nebraska History 77 (1996): 184-193.
"Introduction" and guest editor. William Jennings Bryan and His America, special double issue of Nebraska History, 77 (1996): nos. 3-4.
“The Making of a Labor Radical: Harry Bridges, 1901-1934." Pacific Historical Review 64 (1995): 363-388.
"City Commercial, City Beautiful, City Practical: The San Francisco Visions of William C. Ralston, James D. Phelan, and Michael M. O'Shaughnessy." California History 73 (1994/95): 296-307. Reprinted in Urbanization and the Pacific World, 1500-1900, ed. Lionel Frost. Aldershot, Hants, England: Ashgate/Variorum, 2005. Also reprinted as a three-part series, San Francisco Examiner, Aug. 22-24, 1995.
"Harry Bridges, Labor Radicalism, and the State." Occasional Paper Series, No. 1, Center for Labor Studies, University of Washington, 1994.
"Patterns of Toleration and Discrimination in San Francisco: Civil War to World War I." California History 73 (1994): 130-141.
"The Democratic Party in the Era of William Jennings Bryan." Democrats and the American Idea: A Bicentennial Appraisal, ed. by Peter B. Kovler. Washington, D.C.: Center for National Policy Press, 1992. Pp. 171-201.
"Nebraska, 1883-1925: Cather's Version and History's." Willa Cather: Family, Community, and History [conference proceedings], ed. by John Murphy. Provo: Brigham Young University Press, 1990. Pp. 229-51.
"Willa Cather's Nebraska." Approaches to Teaching My Ántonia, ed. by Susan Rosowski. Approaches to Teaching World Literature series. New York: Modern Language Association, 1989. Pp. 31-36.
"Dan Bride's Memoirs of William Jennings Bryan." Nebraska History 66 (1985): 257-271.
"Willa Cather and the Populists." Great Plains Quarterly 3 (1983): 206-218.
"Lawrence Goodwyn and Nebraska Populism: A Review Essay." Great Plains Quarterly 1 (1981): 181-194.
"Anti-Imperialism on the Middle Border, 1898-1900." Midwest Review, 2nd series, 1 (1979): 19-34.
"Isolationist Voting in 1940: A Statistical Analysis." Nebraska History 51 (1971): 292-310.
Selected Honors
Senior Fulbright Lecturer and Researcher, Heidelberg Center for American Studies, Ruprecht-Karls University of Heidelberg, Germany
President's Medal, San Francisco State University
Visiting Research Scholar, University of Melbourne
Distinguished Fulbright Lecturer, Lomonosov Moscow State University, the Russian Federation
Fellowship, National Endowment for the Humanities
Selected Community Activities
City and County of San Francisco Historical Preservation Fund Committee, since 2013.
City and County of San Francisco Landmarks Preservation Advisory Board, 2003-2008.
Presidio Historical Association, Executive Board member, since 1999.