Episode 1: Prof. Geismer from History Department

 To debut its “Focus on Faculty” project, the Gould Center held an insightful interview with CMC Associate Professor of History Lily Geismer, who has been teaching history at CMC since 2010. Professor Geismer’s area of expertise is twentieth-century US history with a concentration in political and urban history. The “Focus on Faculty” project team hopes that this interview provides CMC students with greater insight into Professor Geismer’s academic work and thoughts on the historical development of the Democratic Party. 

The interview began with an important discussion about “future history,” a phrase that President Chodosh used to describe CMC’s mission in his convocation speech. When asked about the significance of “future history,” Professor Geismer offered her own interpretation of the phrase. She said that history is about looking to the past, which can “give us the tools to critically think about the present.” She then elaborated on this idea, stating that the field of history is important because it “offers possible alternatives” to the nation’s current policies. 

Geismer’s discussion of the importance of history nicely segued into a dynamic conversation about her two most recent publications, Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals the Transformation of the Democratic Party and Left Behind: The Democrats’ Failed Attempt to Solve Inequality. The topics of both publications are very personal to Professor Geismer, who has spent years digging through archives and having conversations with various historical actors to synthesize her arguments. 

Professor Geismer’s Don’t Blame Us, which began as her PhD dissertation, examines the Democratic Party’s reorientation from a party with a “primary base of union workers in cities” to one widely supported by “suburban knowledge-workers.” The book sheds new light on the predominant narrative that the Democratic Party and liberalism have been facing a notable decline. While doing so, it demonstrates how previous policies led to the party’s reorientation and how this reorientation subsequently led to new policies. The process of completing this book is personally significant to Professor Geismer because it revealed to her the importance of “being empathetic to historical actors,” thus changing her approach to historical authorship. 

Professor Geismer continued with an informative spiel about her other publication Left Behind, which explains the Democratic Party’s failure to solve inequality as a result of divisive, “market-oriented” policies adopted between 1980s and 1990s. This publication reflects Professor Geismer’s curiosity about an interesting trend: students once thought that “doing good” required acting in the private sphere but came to believe that positively changing the public sphere was more rewarding.

When asked about her experience of writing these books, Professor Geismer said that she felt constantly engaged with the material. She expressed her appreciation of being able to interview historical actors and “speaking to the lived experiences of people.” In that vein, she emphasized that the field of history is truly about “constructing narratives,” which people can simply accept or use to construct their own. 

As Professor Geismer described her unique experience, she was very transparent about the feedback that she received after her books were published. She noted that because certain audiences are “very invested in a particular narrative” about US history, her books do not appeal to all readers. “Some of [the process] is about learning to have a thicker skin…it’s a difference in interpretation,” she said. 

With this insightful comment came a discussion of the beauty of history and other humanistic fields. As Geismer perfectly stated, the fundamental value of the humanities is that different people could look at the same source of information and come to different conclusions; however, despite these differences, people could collaborate and assess different narratives to answer the world’s most important questions.  

Professor Geismer ended the interview with advice for all students: “Take more history and other humanities classes…because they are incredibly useful tools for people who are thinking about their larger, professional lives. These tools will benefit you regardless of what career path you go on.” 

The Gould Center would like to thank Professor Geismer for her willingness and eagerness to share more about herself and her academic work with the rest of CMC’s community. It is vital that humanistic inquiry continues to permeate throughout CMC and the field of academia in its entirety.