Jonathan Strassfeld (CV) is a Lecturer in the Alexander Grass Humanities Institute at Johns Hopkins University. His work focuses on American intellectual and social history and the history of higher education. His first book, Inventing Philosophy’s Other: Phenomenology in America, is a community study of a geographically disparate group of twentieth century intellectuals that examines the university as a site of both knowledge production and bureaucratic control, showing how everyday administrative needs and institutional practices played a determinative role in philosophy’s schism into “analytic” and “continental” traditions. He is also co-author of Johns Hopkins: The First 150 Years, a comprehensive history of America’s first research university.
His current research examines knowledge-making practices in twentieth century America, exploring the social and cultural fault lines along which different regimes of truth, justification, and belief were contested.POSITIONS
Lecturer, Johns Hopkins University Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, 2026 –
Visiting Assistant Research Professor, Johns Hopkins University Alexander Grass Humanities Institute, 2026
Research Historian, Johns Hopkins University, 2022 – 2025
Lecturer, Cleveland State University History Department, 2021
Visiting Associate, Harvard University Philosophy Department, 2020-2021
Instructor, University of Rochester History Department, 2016
PUBLICATIONS
Inventing Philosophy’s Other: Phenomenology in America (University of Chicago Press, 2022)
Winner of the John Dewey Prize (triennial), Society for U.S. Intellectual History
Reviews: Los Angeles Review of Books; The Journal of American History; The Review of Metaphysics
Andrew Jewett with Jonathan Strassfeld, Johns Hopkins: The First 150 Years (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2026)
“‘I am aware this letter may be offensive’: The Unapologetic Achievements of Ruth Barcan Marcus and Marjorie Glicksman Grene,” Journal of The History of Ideas 83, no. 4 (2022): 579-600.
“American Divide: The Making of ‘Continental Philosophy,’” Modern Intellectual History 17, no. 3 (2020): 833–66.
“Reestablishing Phenomenology in America,” in Sander Verhaegh, ed., American Philosophy and the Intellectual Migration: Pragmatism, Logical Empiricism, Phenomenology, Critical Theory (De Gruyter, 2025).
“Husserl at Harvard: The Origins of American Phenomenology,” in Michela Ferri, Ed., The Reception of Husserlian Phenomenology in North America (Springer, 2019).
AWARDS
John Dewey Prize, Society for U.S. Intellectual History, 2024
Leo Ribuffo Dissertation Prize, Society for U.S. Intellectual History, 2020
Wilson Havelock Coates Book Award, University of Rochester, 2019
Raymond N. Ball Fellowship, University of Rochester, 2018-2019
Dean’s Dissertation Fellowship, University of Rochester, 2017-2018
Edward Peck Curtis, Award for Excellence in Teaching by a Graduate Student, University of Rochester, 2016
Meyers Graduate Teaching Prize, University of Rochester History Department, 2016
Henry F. May Award, Society for US Intellectual History, 2016
Dexter Perkins Prize, University of Rochester History Department, 2015
Robert L. and Mary L. Sproull Fellowship, University of Rochester, 2012-2015
Class of 1869 Prize in Ethics and Social Philosophy, Princeton University, 2009
CONTACT
Jonathan Strassfeld (He/Him)
jstrass6@jh.edu
University of Chicago Press Author Page
Google Scholar Profile
eBird Profile