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College of Humanities People

Kevin Boyle

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Kevin Boyle received his B.A. from the University of Detroit in 1982 and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan in 1990. He teaches twentieth century American history, with an emphasis on class, race, and politics.

Kevin's most recent book, Arc of Justice: A Saga of Race, Civil Rights, and Murder in the Jazz Age (Henry Holt, 2004; paperback edition, 2005) won the National Book Award for non-fiction, the Chicago Tribune Heartland Prize, the Simon Wiesenthal Center's Tolerance Book Award, and the Society of Midland Authors Book Award and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Arc of Justice also was named a New York Times notable book for 2004, a State of Michigan notable book for 2005, the 2007 selection for the Detroit metropolitan area's community-wide reading program, and the 2011 selection for the Great Michigan Read, a state-wide reading program. Kevin's other books include The UAW and the Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945-1968 (Cornell University Press, 1995; paperback edition 1998); Muddy Boots and Ragged Aprons: Images of Working-Class Detroit, 1900-1930, which he co-authored with Victoria Getis (Wayne State University Press,1997); and an edited volume, Organized Labor and American Politics, 1894-1994: the Labor-Liberal Alliance (SUNY Press, 1998). He is at work on two books, The Splendid Dead: An American Ordeal, which is to be published by Houghton Mifflin, and Change Is Gonna Come: America in the 1960s, to be published by W.W. Norton.

Kevin's articles have appeared in Diplomatic History, The Journal of American History, Labor History, The Michigan Historical Review, and various anthologies. He has also published essays and reviews in The Baltimore Sun, The Chicago Tribune, The Detroit Free Press, Inc. Magazine, the New York Times, and the Washington Post.

Kevin has received OSU's Alumni Distinguished Teaching Award and the Distinguished University Lecturer Award. In December 2009 he delivered the university's commencement address. He has held fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the Fulbright Commission, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation. In 1997-98 he held the Mary Ball Washington Chair in American History at University College Dublin, Ireland. He serves on the advisory board for the Walter P. Reuther Library, and on the editorial boards of Labor History and Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas. He is also a Fellow of the Society of American Historians and a member of the PEN American Center.

If you would like to talk to Kevin about a speaking engagement, please contact him via email rather than by phone. Thank you.