Prof. James Farrell
James Farrell

James Farrell
Professor of History
Boldt Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities (1994-1970)
PH.D., Illinois, 1980
Recent American history, consumer culture, college culture, environmental history

x3143
farrellj@stolaf.edu

Jim Farrell is Professor of History, American Studies, Environmental Studies and American Conversations. As an interdisciplinary scholar and teacher, Jim's teaching has been weird, if not innovative, including courses on Environmental History, the Mall of America, Nuclear Weapons and American Culture, Walt Disney’s America, Consuming College Culture, and Campus Ecology.  Despite this record, Jim was chosen as St. Olaf’s first Boldt Distinguished Teaching Professor in the Humanities, proving that Norwegians have a rich and refined sense of humor.  At the end of the millennium, Jim chaired the committee that wrote St. Olaf 2000: Identity and Mission for the 21st Century.  As “John Cummins,” Jim performs a one-man Chautauqua show based on the life of a nineteenth-century Minnesota pioneer.  As “Dr. America,” he was also curator of the magnificent (but wholly imaginary) American Studies Museum on public radio station WCAL.  Recently, as a member of the college’s Sustainability Task Force, he’s had a hand in the greening of St. Olaf. With colleagues at Carleton College, he’s facilitated a series of sustainability workshops on “Cows, Colleges and Curriculum.”  Most recently, he served as a member of the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education’s Summit on Sustainability in the Curriculum, held February 2010 in San Diego, CA.

Jim holds a B.A. in Political Science from Loyola University in Chicago (1971), and both an M.A. in History (1972) and a Ph.D. in American Culture from the University of Illinois (1980).  His books include Inventing the American Way of Death 1830-1920 (Temple University Press, 1980),  The Nuclear Devil's Dictionary (Usonia Press, 1985), The Spirit of the Sixties: Making Postwar Radicalism (Routledge, 1997); and One Nation Under Goods: Malls and the Seductions of American Shopping (Smithsonian, 2003). His new book, The Nature of College: College Culture, Consumer Culture and the Environment, will be published in Fall 2010.