Short biography

James Kennedy is an American historian who since 2007 has worked as professor of Dutch history since the Middle Ages at the Universiteit van Amsterdam.

Korte biografie

James Kennedy (1963) is Amerikaans historicus. Hij groeide op in de Verenigde Staten en is vanaf 2003 werkzaam in Nederland. Vanaf 2003 was hij hoogleraar Contemporaine Geschiedenis aan de Vrije Universiteit en sinds 2007 is hij hoogleraar Nederlandse Geschiedenis sinds de Middeleeuwen aan de Universiteit van Amsterdam.

Research

Social "Emancipation" and Inclusion

Since 2008 Kennedy has been leading a team onthe history of "inclusive thinking," a project that investigates efforts since the Second World War to include new groups of citizens and residents in the Netherlands.  The project seeks to understand on which terms this inclusion, or ostensible inclusion, has taken place.  Working from a 1.5 million euro grant from the VSB-foundation, Kennedy has had doctoral and postdoctoral students working on postwar developments in education, health care, on postcolonial citizens and subjects, and on the ways that cities have negotiated religious diversity.

History of Corruption

 

Building off a interfaculty project that is now nearing completion on the history of corruption and public values that is soon to yield three dissertations on the history of corruption scandals in the Netherlands between 1650 and 1950, a new grant from the European Commission (also granted to the UvA's medieval historians) makes it possible to investigate the history of anti-corruption efforts in Europe.  The project has begun in mid-2012.

Religious Actors and Civil Society  

The research into the role of religious organizations resulted in a study of the role of Protestant churches in Dutch society since 1848, completed in 2010.  Articles will appear in 2012 and 2013 on the place of the place ecumenical "religious internationals" in the postwar firmament (as part of a book project launched at Oxford) and the shifting place of religious organizations in the "religious crisis" of the 1960s.

Other Research Interests

 

• history of citizenship

• history of euthanasia (including 2002 book)

• history of management and public administration

Additional Recent Projects

 

• Co-applicant and participant in the NWO Nederlab project (2012), which is developing research instrumentaria for a "diachronic corpus" of Dutch history

• Participant and supervisor in Utrecht-centered NWO-Horizon project (awarded 2012) on the USA as "reference culture" in the Netherlands, 1890-1990

Cursusonderwerpen (Course Offerings)

Religie en Politiek sinds 1940.

De erfenisvan de jaren zestig.

Traditie en Moderniteit.

Historische Debatten.

Historisch Atelier.

Kerk, Staat en Civil Society

De historische Jezus en de historische Mohammed.

Protest and consensus in Nederland

Selected Publications

History of the Low Countries [editing and translating of the textbook edited by J.C.H. Blom and E. Lamberts] (New York: Berghahn Books, 1999); 2nd edition [with new chapter translated], 2006.

A Concise History of the Netherlands (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming).  

Stad op een berg. De publieke rol van protestantse kerken (Zoetermeer: Boekencentrum, 2010). 

Bezielende Verbanden. Gedachten over religie, politiek en maatschappij in het moderne Nederland (Amsterdam: Bert Bakker, 2009).  

Nieuw Babylon inAanbouw. Nederland in de jaren zestig (Amsterdam: Boom, 1995) 2nd ed., 1997; 3rd ed., 1999. New version in 2013.

Het eenzame gelijk. Hervormers tussen droom en daad, 1850-1950 [edited with Ido de Haan, P.J Knegtmans and Wichert ten Have] (Amsterdam: Boom, 2009).

Public Voices [edited with Joris van Eijnatten, Mark Rutgers and Pieter Wagenaar], X, 2 (2008).

"Politiek," in M.B. ter Borg, ed., Handboek religie in Nederland (Delft: Meinema, 2008), 359-379.

"Religion, Nation and European Representations of the Past," Stefan Berger and Chris Lorenz,eds., The Contested Nation: Ethnicity, Class, Religion and Gender in National Histories (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan,2008), 104-134.

"Die Kirchen und die niederländische Gesellschaft. Ein neues Verhältnis," in Christiane Frantz and Holger Kolb, Transnationale Zivilgesellschaft in Europa. Traditionen, Muster, Hindernisse, Chancen (Münster: Waxmann, 2009), 159-179.

"Die Niederländischen protestantischen Kirchen auf der Suche nach einer öffentlichen Rolle," in Arnd Bauerkämper and Jürgen Nautz, eds., Zwischen Fürsorge und Seelsorge. Christliche Kirchen in den europäischen Zivilgesellschaften seit dem 18. Jahrhundert (Frankfurt, 2009), 259-285.

"Cultural Developments in the Dutch-American Relationship since 1945," in Hans Krabbendam, Cornelis A. Van Minnen and Giles Scott-Smith, eds, Four Centuriesof Dutch-American Relations (Amsterdam, 2009), 931-948.

"Dutch Political Developments and Religious Reform," in Keith Robbins, ed., The Dynamics of Religious Reform in Northern Europe, 1780-1920: Political and Legal Perspectives ( Leuven ,2010), 117-142.

"Globalization, the nation state and religious newcomers. Reflections on two countries," in E. Sengers and T. Sunier (eds.), Religious newcomers and the nation state: Political culture and organized religion in France and the Netherlands ( Delft , 2010), 155-165.

"Religion in the modern Netherlands and the problems of pluralism," [with Jan Zwemer] in Bijdragen en Mededelingen betreffende de Geschiedenis der Nederlanden, 125, 2/3 (2010), 237-268.

"Geen buigingen naar rechts? Enkele opmerkingen over de programmatissche ontwikkelingen vanhet CDA tussen 1980 en 2010" [with Hans-Martien ten Napel] in G. Voerman, ed., De conjunctuur van de macht. Het Christen Democratisch Appel 1980-2010 (Amsterdam, 2011), 109-130.

"Op zoek naar een nationaal verhaal," in Nationaal Comité 4 en 5 mei, Breekbare dagen. 4 en 5 mei door de jaren heen (N.p.: Stichting Collectieve Propaganda van het Nederlandse Boek, 2012), 13-17.

"Protestant Ecclesiastical Internationals," in Abigail Green and Vincent Viaene, Religious Internationals in the Modern Age ( Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), 292-318.

"The lateness of the Dutch euthanasia debate and its consequences," in Stuart J. Youngner and Gerrit K. Kimsma, eds., Physician-Assisted Death in Perspective. Assessing the Dutch Experience (forthcoming, Cambridge University Press, 2012).

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