Andrew Fearnley

Biography

I am an historian of the modern United States, with particular interests in the history of racial thought, African American intellectual history, and the history of American sports, leisure, and work. Much of my work deals with the concept of race, and the history of racial thought in the modern world. My doctoral work considered how American psychiatrists''  ways of thinking and practicing were shaped by racial assumptions, and proposed ways in which historians could go about illuminating this concept in that field. The work charts the introduction of new methods to the mental sciences -- the case file, statistics and epidemiology, family therapy, genetic analysis -- arguing that these methods shaped the profile and purchase of concepts like race. It is work that draws from several different fields, including the history and philosophy of science, intellectual history, and the histories of racial thought.

In the last few years I have also written on several other subjects, many of which have applied the techniques of intellectual history to other domains. Such projects have included the role of periodization in Anglo-American historiography; the influence that psychoanalysis had on Anglo-American anthropology; and questions of funding raising within the North America New Left, especially among Black Power groups (I spoke about the British Black Panthers on the BBC Radio 4 programme, Making History, in September 2013). I am currently at work on three other research projects, including a co-edited volume on Harlem''s symbolism in twentieth-century black cultural and intellectual life; an intellectual biography of the Anglo-American anthropologist Ashley Montagu; and an article around late twentieth-century sports spectatorship. 

Areas of expertise

• F001 United States local history

Biology, Medicine and Health (BMH) Domains

• Neuroscience & Mental Health