September 2001

MARK H. LEFF

Office:

Residence:

Department of History

604 W. Washington St.

309 Gregory Hall

Urbana, IL  61801

Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Phone: 217-367-5687

Urbana, IL  61801

mleff@uiuc.edu

Phone: 217-244-2087

Teaching Positions

Associate Professor (1990-  ), Assistant Professor (1986-1990), Department of History,

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC)

--Undergraduate and graduate-level courses on 20th and 19th century U.S. public policy

and political, economic, and social history

--Executive Committee (1992-94, 1997-99, 2000-01)

Director, Undergraduate Studies (1992-94, 1998-01)

Chair, Latino/a Search Committee (2000-01)

--affiliate, ACDIS and Afro-American Studies and Research Program

--member, Provost’s “Work/Life” Advisory Group

Search Committee to Advise the President on Selection of a Chancellor, 2000-01

Advisory Committee, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities

Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellow in History, Harvard University, 1985-86

Research/teaching on WWII home front politics and the history of the Social Security crisis

Assistant Professor, Department of History, Washington University, 1977-1985

Honors and Awards

Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching 1998 Illinois Professor of the Year

UIUC Campus Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, 1998

William F. Prokasy Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching, 1991

George and Gladys Queen Award for Excellence in Teaching in History, 1990

UIUC list of faculty ranked as excellent by their students, 1987, 1988, 1989, 1990, 1991,

1992, 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000

Selected member, National Academy of Social Insurance, 1990-96

Faculty Fellow of UIUC Program for Study of Cultural Values and Ethics, 1994-95

UIUC Research Board released time award and travel grant, 1990 and 1998

UIUC Campus Honors Program and Arms Control, Disarmament, and International Security

course development grants, 1987 and 1988; research assistantship support, 1992-93

Research Assistantship support from UIUC Research Board, 1988, 1989, 2000

Washington Univ. Council of Students of Arts and Sciences Distinguished Service Award, 1985

Andrew W. Mellon Faculty Fellowship in the Humanities, Harvard University, 1985

American Council of Learned Societies / Ford Foundation Fellowship, 1985

(declined in favor of the Mellon Faculty Fellowship)

Eisenhower World Affairs Institute travel grant, 1985

Washington University Council of Students of Arts and Sciences Faculty Award for 1982-83

National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Stipend, 1980

Ford Foundation Summer Stipend, 1980

Ford Foundation dissertation year grant, 1974-75

Publications

The Limits of Symbolic Reform: The New Deal and Taxation, 1933-1939 (Cambridge University

Press, 1984)

“Revisioning U.S. Political History,” American Historical Review, June 1995, pp. 829-53

“The Politics of Sacrifice on the American Home Front in World War II,” Journal of American

History, March 1991, pp. 1296-1318; reprinted in Nash/Schultz, Retracing the American Past,

 4th ed., 2000

“Taxing the ‘Forgotten Man’: The Politics of Social Security Finance in the New Deal,”

Journal of American History, September 1983, pp. 359-81; reprinted in Hamilton, ed.,

The New Deal, 1999

“Franklin D. Roosevelt,” in Brinkley/Dyer, The Reader’s Companion to the American Presidency

(Houghton Mifflin, 2000), pp. 366-85

“Intolerance,” “Individualism,” and “Women’s War,” in Stewart/Fritzsche, eds., Imagining the

Twentieth Century, 1997

“The House that Reuther Built,” Labor History, Summer 1996, pp. 347-52

“Medicare and Medicaid,” Dictionary of American History, 1996, pp. 15-16

“Home Front Mobilization in World War II: American Political Images of Civic Responsibility,” in

Kanet, ed., Peacekeeping and Warmaking, 1995, pp. 277-97

“Strange Bedfellows: The Utility Magnate as Politician,” in Madison, ed., Wendell Willkie, 1992,

pp. 22-46

“World War II, American Style: The Mystique of Home Front Sacrifice,” Swords and Plowshares,

October 1989, pp. 8-10

“Speculating in Social Security Futures: The Perils of Payroll Tax Financing, 1939-1950,” in

Nash, ed., Social Security: The First Half Century, 1988, pp. 243-78

“Historical Perspectives on Old Age Insurance: The State of the Art on the Art of the State,” in

Berkowitz, ed., Social Security after Fifty, 1987, pp. 29-53

Co-authored, “The Politics of Ineffectiveness: Federal Firearms Legislation, 1919-1938,” Annals

of the Academy of Political and Social Science, May 1982, pp. 48-62

“Consensus for Reform: The Mothers’-Pension Movement in the Progressive Era,” Social

Service Review, September 1973, pp. 397-417, reprinted in Graebner/Richards, The

 American Record, 3d ed., 1995 and Critchlow/Hawley, eds., Poverty and Public Policy

 in Modern America, 1989

Conference Activities

paper (“Selling War Sacrifice”), presented at OAH convention, April 1999

paper (‘Everybody Thought We Were Nuts’: Philip K. Wrigley, Wartime Advertising, and the

Profits of Patriotism”), presented at Midwest Journalism History Conference, April 1996

paper (“They Came, They Saw, They Concurred: Government and Public Relations in World

War II”), presented at OAH convention, April 1995

paper (“American Capitalism’s Finest Hour?” Images of Business and Labor in World War II”),

presented to World War II Studies Association, National Archives, May 1993

paper (“The Prophets of Patriotism: The American Advertising Industry and Home Front

Propaganda in World War II”), presented at the “World War II: The Home Front” Symposium,

University of Oklahoma, February 1993

paper (“Merchandizing Images of Homefront Sacrifice: Advertising and Propaganda in the United

States and Great Britain in World War II”), presented at the “Conference on the American Home

Front during World War II,” Indiana University, October 1991

paper (“Mobilizing the American Home Front in World War II: The Advertising Industry and the

Motif of Sacrifice”), presented at American Military Institute Annual Meeting, March 1991

paper (“What? Me Sacrifice?: The Politics and Economics of Civic Responsibility in World

War II”), presented at OAH convention, March 1989

paper (“Determining Comparative Sacrifice: Negotiating American Mobilization in World

War II”), presented at AHA convention, March 1989

paper (“Social Security and the Historians”), presented at “Social Security after Fifty”

conference, George Washington University, March 1986

paper (“Speculating in Social Security Futures”), presented at 50th Anniversary Conference

on Social Security, Albuquerque, New Mexico, March 1985

commentator and chair, “”Local Activism,” “History of the Grassroots” conference, October 2000

panelist and chair, “Race and the Welfare State,” Social Science History Association meeting,

November 1998

commentator, “War and Welfare,” OAH convention, March 1996

commentator and chair, “The Private Sides of the American Welfare State,” Social Science

History Association meeting, November 1995

commentator, “Imagining National Identities,” American Studies conference, November 1995

commentator, North American Labor History conference, October 1993

commentator, “Gender, Ideology, and Social Policy,” Social Science History Association meeting,

November 1992

commentator and chair, “Making and Remaking Modern American Liberalism,” OAH convention,

 April 1992

commentator and chair, “Social Welfare in the 1950s,” “Ike’s America” conference, October 1990

commentator, “Social Insurance and the American Approach to Welfare,” Social Science History

Association meeting, November 1998

commentator, “The Dominant Culture and the Immigrant Minorities,” Duquesne History Forum,

October 1987

commentator, “Depression and the New Deal in World Perspective,” OAH convention, April 1986

commentator at symposium on “Approaches to a Comparative History of Bureaucracy in the

United States of America and Germany,” University of Cologne, March 1986

Professional Activities

Editorial Board, Journal of American History, 1990-1993

Manuscript and book reviews for Oxford University Press, Cambridge University Press,

Johns Hopkins University Press, Cornell University Press, University of Illinois Press,

University Press of Kansas, Houghton Mifflin, University Press of Kentucky, Random

House, American Historical Review, Journal of American History, Radical History Review,

The Historian, Journal of Illinois Historical Society, Journal of Policy History, Pacific

Historical Review, Presidential Studies Quarterly, Indiana Magazine of History,

Sociological Quarterly, Journal of Economic History