American Genius: A History of the Idea in the Modern United States

Abstract

This dissertation studies modern Americans’ debates over the meaning and importance of individual genius from 1880 through the early 1970s. The study tracks not the existence of individual genius but rather how everyday Americans used the concept over the course of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Far from being a concept used exclusively to identify eminent individuals, American educators, writers, parents, and public commentators put the idea of genius to work for a variety of purposes: to argue for greater psychological autonomy in a society that seemingly promised less and less to its participants; to critique and reform mass public education; and to express both enthusiasm and anxiety for scientific development. In these discourses, Americans have wrestled with some of their core social values: tradition and progress, autonomy and collective life; formal expertise and common sense; excellence and equality. By reconstructing how everyday Americans sought to cultivate genius in a variety of unlike environments – including the workplace, the public-school classroom, the high technology laboratory, and even the psyche – my historical analysis examines how a durable way of thinking about genius transformed these arenas throughout the twentieth century. I argue that individual genius became an essential language for Americans to discuss the profound scientific and technological developments disrupting modern life. The project contributes to the historiography of intelligence, creativity, innovation, and giftedness in modern America.