Marilyn B. Young (April 25, 1937 – February 19, 2017) was a historian of
American foreign relations and professor of history at
New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, th ...
.
She graduated from
Samuel J. Tilden High School
Samuel J. Tilden High School is a New York City public high school in the East Flatbush section of Brooklyn, New York City. It was named for Samuel J. Tilden, the former governor of New York State and presidential candidate who, although carryin ...
in Brooklyn in 1953 and
Vassar College
Vassar College ( ) is a private liberal arts college in Poughkeepsie, New York, United States. Founded in 1861 by Matthew Vassar, it was the second degree-granting institution of higher education for women in the United States, closely foll ...
in 1957.
Her doctoral work at Harvard University was supported by an anonymous full scholarship to learn Chinese and to pursue research in the field of United States relations with East Asia. She did her doctoral work under the direction of
Ernest R. May, a scholar of American foreign relations, and
John King Fairbank
John King Fairbank (May 24, 1907 – September 14, 1991) was an American historian of China and United States–China relations. He taught at Harvard University from 1936 until his retirement in 1977. He is credited with building the field of C ...
, an historian of China. Her doctoral dissertation became her first book, ''The Rhetoric of Empire: American China Policy, 1895–1901'', which examined the American
Open Door Notes and the international diplomacy of the
Boxer Uprising
The Boxer Rebellion, also known as the Boxer Uprising, the Boxer Insurrection, or the Yihetuan Movement, was an anti-foreign, anti-colonial, and anti-Christian uprising in China between 1899 and 1901, towards the end of the Qing dynasty, by ...
. She taught at
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
, mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth"
, former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821)
, budget = $10.3 billion (2021)
, endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...
, before moving to NYU in 1980.
[Faculty Profile New York University Department of History](_blank)
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In 2000–01 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship
Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the art ...
and an American Council of Learned Societies
American(s) may refer to:
* American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America"
** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America
** American ancestry, p ...
Fellowship, and the Berkshire Women's History Prize for ''The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990''. She was elected President of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations in 2011.
Scholarly and political career
In the late 1960s, as part of her opposition to the American war in Vietnam, she was a founding member of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars
The Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars (CCAS) was founded in 1968 by a group of graduate students and younger faculty as part of the opposition to the American participation in the Vietnam War. They proposed a "radical critique of the assumptio ...
. Many of her subsequent writings concerned this and following American wars. She recalled in her presidential address to the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations:
Of the Iraq War
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق (Kurdish languages, Kurdish)
, partof = the Iraq conflict (2003–present), I ...
, she wrote: "If Vietnam was Korea in slow motion, then Operation Iraqi Freedom
{{Infobox military conflict
, conflict = Iraq War {{Nobold, {{lang, ar, حرب العراق (Arabic) {{Nobold, {{lang, ku, شەڕی عێراق (Kurdish languages, Kurdish)
, partof = the Iraq conflict (2003–present), I ...
is Vietnam on crack cocaine. In less than two weeks a 30-year-old vocabulary is back: credibility gap, seek and destroy, hard to tell friend from foe, civilian interference in military affairs, the dominance of domestic politics, winning, or more often, losing hearts and minds."[quoted a]
Bill Moyers Journal (PBS) May 11, 2007
from Historians Reflect on the War in Iraq: A Roundtable (Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting, Memphis Tennessee, 2003).
Young joined the faculty at NYU in 1980. Young founded the Women Studies Department at NYU and, from 1993 to 1996, she was the chairwoman of its history department. Young was a co-director of the Tamiment Library's Center for the United States and the Cold War. She became president of the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations in 2011.
While in graduate school she met and married Ernest P. Young, an historian of China described by a friend as her "early intellectual companion." They separated and then divorced in 1986.
Selected publications
For a fuller list, see Rebecca Karl, "In Memoriam."
Books
*
The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990
'. (Harper Collins 1991), .
* with William G. Rosenberg,
Transforming Russia and China: Revolutionary Struggle in the Twentieth Century
' (Oxford University Press, 1982), .
* ''Women in China: Studies in Social Change and Feminism''. (Center for Chinese Studies, 1973), .
* ''The Rhetoric of Empire: America China Policy, 1895–1901.'' (Harvard University Press, 1968), .
Edited Books
* with Y. Tanaka, ''Bombing Civilians: a 20th century history'', (The New Press, 2009).
* with Mark Bradley, ''Making Sense of the Vietnam War'', (Oxford University Press, 2008).
* with Lloyd Gardner, ''Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam'', The New Press, 2007.
* with Lloyd Gardner, ''The New American Empire'', The New Press, 2005.
* with Tom Grunfeld and John Fitzgerald, ''The Vietnam War: A History in Documents'', OUP, 2003.
* with Robert Buzzanco, ''Companion to the Vietnam War'', Blackwell, 2002.
* edited with Lynn Hunt
Lynn Avery Hunt (born November 16, 1945) is the Eugen Weber Professor of Modern European History at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her area of expertise is the French Revolution, but she is also well known for her work in European cu ...
and Jeffrey Wasserstrom
Jeffrey N. Wasserstrom is an American historian of modern China. He is Chancellor's Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine. Wasserstrom's research interests began with the role of student protest and have grown to include the ...
, ''Human Rights and Revolutions'', (Rowman & Littlefield, 2000),
**2nd edition (2007) with same editors and Greg Grandin
Greg Grandin (born 1962) is a professor of history at Yale University. He previously taught at New York University. He is author of a number of books, including ''Fordlândia: The Rise and Fall of Henry Ford's Forgotten Jungle City'', which wa ...
,
* Editorial Committee, ''Reporting Vietnam:American Journalism, 1959–1975'', two volumes, Library of America
The Library of America (LOA) is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature. Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LOA has published over 300 volumes by authors ran ...
, 1998.
* with Marvin Gettleman
Marvin E. Gettleman (September 12, 1933 – January 7, 2017), was an American professor emeritus of leftist history, best known for the anthology Vietnam and America' (1965).
Background
Gettleman was born on September 12, 1933, in New York Ci ...
, Jane Franklin
Jane, Lady Franklin (née Griffin; 4 December 1791 – 18 July 1875) was the second wife of the English explorer Sir John Franklin. During her husband's period as Lieutenant-Governor of Van Diemen's Land, she became known for her philanthropic ...
and Bruce Franklin, ''Vietnam and America'', Grove Press, 1985; rev. edition Anchor Books, 1995.
* with Rayna Rapp and Sonia Kruks, ''Promissory Notes: Women and the Transition to Socialism'', Monthly Review Press, 1983.
* ''American Expansionism: the Critical Issues, Little Brown'', 1973, edited collection
Articles
* "The Korean War: Ambivalence on the Silver Screen," in ''The Korean War at Fifty: International Perspectives'', edited by Mark F. Wilkinson (John Adams Center for Military History and Strategic Analysis, 2004).
* "In the Combat Zone," reprinted in ''Hollywood and War: The Film Reader'', edited by J. David Slocum (NY/London; Routledge, 2006).
* "Two, Three, Many Vietnams," ''Cold War Studies'', November 2006.
* "The Vietnam Laugh Track," in David Ryan, ed. ''Iraq in Vietnam'' (London: Routledge, 2006)
* "’Shared Victory,’ Korea, the U.S. and France," in ''The First Vietnam War: Colonial Conflict and Cold War Crisis'', ed. Mark Atwood Lawrence and Fredrik Logevall. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).
* "The American Empire at War," in ''The Barbarization of Warfare'', edited by George Kassimeris (London: Routledge/NY: NYU Press, 2006).
* "Counterinsurgency, Now and Forever," in Gardner and Young, ''Iraq and the Lessons of Vietnam''
* "Why Vietnam Still Matters," in ''The War That Never Ends'', edited by John Ernst and David Anderson (University Press of Kentucky), 2007.
Notes
References and further reading
*
*
*
External links
Marilyn Blatt Young WorldCat Identity
Marilyn Young Papers
at Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at New York University
{{DEFAULTSORT:Young, Marilyn B.
1937 births
2017 deaths
20th-century American historians
American women historians
University of Michigan faculty
New York University faculty
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
Samuel J. Tilden High School alumni
Vassar College alumni
American anti-war activists
20th-century American women writers
Historians from New York (state)
People from Flatbush, Brooklyn
21st-century American women