A historian of the United States in the 20th century Richard S. Kirkendall was the eighth scholar to hold the Bullitt Chair in American history at the University of Washington. He occupied the chair as a tenured professor from 1988 to 1998. In addition to the Bullitt Chair, Kirkendall has also held faculty positions at Wesleyan (1955-1958), the University of Missouri, Columbia (1958-1973), Indiana University, and Iowa State University (1981-1988), where he was the Henry A. Wallace Professor of History. He retired from teaching in 1998 after more than forty years in the profession.
Born in Spokane, Washington on April 11, 1928 Kirkendall received his B.A. from Gonzaga University in 1950 and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1958. Between college and graduate school he served in the United States Navy spending much of 1951 and 1952 on a destroyer in the waters off the coast of North Korea. As a 20th century historian Kirkendall’s work has been dominated by two areas of interest: American agriculture and rural life and the presidency of Harry S. Truman. He has published, for example, two books on agriculture and four on Truman including Social Scientists and Farm Politics in the Age of Roosevelt (1966), The Truman Period as a Research Field (1967), The Truman Period as a Research Field: A Reappraisal (1974), The Truman Encyclopedia (1989), Uncle Henry: A Documentary Profile of the First Henry Wallace (1993), and Harry’s Farewell: Interpreting and Teaching the Truman Presidency (2004). From 1982 to 1993 he was the series editor for the Iowa State University Press’s Henry A. Wallace Series in Agricultural History and Rural Studies, which published 16 books during his tenure. He is currently at work on three book projects: “The Organization of American Historians: A Centennial History,” “Harry S. Truman’s Quest for Peace,” and “Ambivalent Revolutionary: Henry A. Wallace and the Transformation of Farming and Rural Life in America.”
Professor Kirkendall is also the author of numerous articles, essays, and reviews that have appeared in journals and books such as The Journal of American History, Pacific Northwest Quarterly, Journal of the West, Agricultural History, Journal of Farm Economics, Missouri Historical Review, The Oxford Companion to Politics of the World (Oxford, 2001), The Encyclopedia of the Great Depression (Macmillan, 2004), Local Consequences of the Global Cold War (Stanford, 2007), and Harry S. Truman, the State of Israel, and the Quest for Peace in the Middle East (Truman State University Press, 2009).
Administration dominated Kirkendall's career during two periods: 1968-1971, his time as chair of the University of Missouri's history department, and 1973-1981, his years as executive secretary of the Organization of American Historians (OAH). He was also on the Board of Directors for the Harry S. Truman Library Institute (1973-1981, 1987-2008) and was chair of its research committee from 1998 to 2008. In 2008 he was elected an honorary trustee of the Truman Institute. He has also served as president of the Agricultural History Society (1973-1974), as vice president of the Professional Division of the American Historical Association (1983-1986), and as chair of the OAH Centennial Committee (2005-2007). In 2001 Kirkendall was awarded the distinguished Service Award by the OAH.
Source:
Richard S. Kirkendall C.V. (in possession of author)
Authored by:
Deborah McNally, University of Washington, Seattle
