Edward J. K. Gitre

Edward J.K. Gitre, Associate Professor

_{Department of History

407 Major Williams Hall, 220 Stanger St.

Blacksburg, VA 24061

540-231-8372 | egitre@vt.edu}

An assistant professor of history at Virginia Tech, Edward J.K. Gitre is also director of The American Soldier in World War II. Funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, this Virginia Tech-based interdisciplinary digital initiative uses crowdsourcing and machine-learning to offer scholars and the public a remarkable collection of uncensored handwritten commentaries composed by American service personnel during World War II.

Gitre is currently working on several book manuscripts. One explores World War II, soldier-to-veteran readjustment, and the war’s long-term social and cultural legacy. The second is an intellectual history of interdisciplinarity and transnational dialogue in the social and behavioral sciences, focused on the “Culture and Personality” movement. The third focuses on David Riesman Jr., his book The Lonely Crowd, and America’s postwar conformity.

Gitre would welcome working with students interested in these and other topics in modern American society and culture.

Principal Areas of Research Focus

Transatlantic Modern U.S. Cultural and Intellectual History
History of the Interdisciplinary Social and Behavioral Sciences
War and Society
World War II

Education

Ph.D., Rutgers University
M.A., University of Manchester
M.A., AGTS/Evangel University
B.A., University of Michigan

Professional Roles

Director, The American Soldier in World War II

Awards and Honors

NEH Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Foundations Grant, 2017
XCaliber Award, recognizing exceptional, high-caliber contributions to technology-enriched teaching and learning, Virginia Tech, 2017
Honorable Mention, Primary Source Award for Teaching, Center for Research Libraries, 2016
Grant-in-Aid, Rockefeller Archive Center, 2015
John C. Slater Fellowship, American Philosophical Society Library, 2012

Publications

Journal Articles

“The American Soldier Collaborative Digital Archive.” Co-author Kurt Luther. White Paper, National Endowment for the Humanities, Humanities Collections and Reference Resources, Division of Preservation and Access, 31 July 2018.

“The Great Escape: World War II, Neo-Freudianism, and the Origins of Psychocultural Analysis.” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 47 (Winter 2011): 18-43.

“Importing Freud: First-Wave Psychoanalysis, Interwar Social Sciences, and the Interdisciplinary Foundations of an American Social Theory.” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 36 (Summer 2010): 239-62.

“A Failure to Communicate: Benjamin Braddock and the Aims of Education.” Hedgehog Review 12 (Spring 2010): 63-74.

“William James on Divine Intimacy: Psychical Research, Cosmological Realism, and a Circumscribed Re-Reading of The Varieties of Religious Experience.” History of the Human Sciences 19 (May 2006): 1-22.

Book Chapters

“‘This is Our Story’: The Early Historiography of the Azusa Street Revival and the Spiritual Politics of Pentecostal Memory.” In A Light to the World: Explorations in Ecumenism, Missions and Pentecostalism. Editors Stanley M. Burgess and Paul Wesley Lewis. Eugene, OR: Pickwick, 2017.

“Retread America: Postwar Re-adjustment, Boredom, and Life in The Lonely Crowd.” In Aesthetic Fatigue: Modernity and the Language of Waste. Editors John F.M. Clark and John Scanlan. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2013.