Pauline Alice Maier (née Rubbelke; April 27, 1938 – August 12, 2013) was a historian of the American Revolution, whose work also addressed the late colonial period and the history of the United States after the end of the Revolutionary War. She was the William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of American History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
Maier achieved prominence over a fifty-year career for her scholarly histories and journal articles. She was a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She taught undergraduates and authored textbooks and online courses. Her popular career included series with PBS and the History Channel. She appeared on Charlie Rose, C-SPAN2's In Depth and wrote for The New York Times review pages for 20 years. Maier was the 2011 President of the Society of American Historians. She won the 2011 George Washington Book Prize for her book Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution, 1787–1788.
Early life and education Born in St. Paul, Minnesota in 1938 as Pauline Rubbelke, she attended parochial schools.Yeung, Anna M., "Charles S. and Pauline R. Maier" in The Crimson online Fri. May 28, 2010. Viewed 04/22/2001. Her father was a firefighter and her mother was a homemaker with five children."Contemporary Authors, New Revision Series" vol. 150, 2006, Gale, Cengage Learning, Farmington Hills, MI On entering Radcliffe College as an undergraduate, her original ambition was to be in the newspaper business.Denison, Dave. "American truths, American myths" interview with Pauline Maier in Commonwealth Magazine, Fall 1998. Viewed 04/23/2011.
She was a writer on The Harvard Crimson and worked summers at the Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Massachusetts. She graduated from Radcliffe in 1960 with a bachelor's degree in history and literature.Denison, Dave. Commonwealth Magazine, Fall 1998. It was on the Crimson that she met her future husband, Charles S. Maier. After graduation, they both attended schools at Oxford on fellowships, she as a Fulbright Scholar at the London School of Economics and Political Science. After completing their studies, they married and toured Europe together.Yeung, Anna M., Op. Cit.
The couple returned to Harvard University to pursue doctoral degrees, Charles in European history, and Pauline in 20th century urban studies in line with her interest in contemporary politics. But after taking Bernard Bailyn's "Colonial and Revolutionary America" seminar, she said, "Once you get into the 18th century, you never get out."Denison, Dave. Op. Cit. Pauline and Charles earned their Ph.D. degrees at Harvard, and Charles began a career there. They raised two daughters and a son in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Maier pursued gardening and cooking at the family weekend home.
Career Maier taught at University of Massachusetts Boston for nine years, and one year at the University of Wisconsin-Madison before taking her position at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1978 as William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of American History. Her career included appointments at five universities, and numerous fellowships and awards."Lehrman Lecturer Biography" Her lecture classes included three courses on early American history, and she co-taught "Riots, Strikes and Conspiracies in American History" with urban historian Robert M. Fogelson."MIT Maier Web Page", viewed 05/20/2011. The three early American history courses Maier taught solo were undergraduate courses in American Revolution used Gordon S. Wood's, 'The American Revolution: a history'; American History to 1865, used 'Inventing America"; and American Classics, primary sources, 'often cited, seldom read'. "Riots, Strikes and Conspiracies in American History" used Maier's work for early periods, Fogelson's for late. "MIT History undergrad courses"
Maier chaired a university-wide committee at MIT in 1985 to reorganize its humanities schools and broaden and structure its programs."MIT School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (SHASS) department facebook" Its adopted recommendations expanded women's studies, awarded specific area degrees, and initiated a doctoral program joining history and anthropology under Dean Ann Fetter Friedlaender."MIT catalog humanities department history" MIT's faculty voted Maier the Killian Award in 1998, given annually to one senior faculty member for outstanding achievement. The recipient presents on their professional activities over their lecturer year.Pauline Maier "MIT Maier webpage", MIT faculty "Killian Committee" webpage.
In 1976, she became a member of the American Antiquarian Society. An offprint of its proceedings featured her "Boston and New York in the 18th Century" (1982)."American Antiquarian Society "Proceedings" , Oct 1981, pp. 177–195. The "American Antiquarian Society" is a national research library of American history literature & culture through 1876. Maier and spouse are listed in "membership" viewed 05/16/2011. The Society sponsored a "2006 Summer Institute" with the 'Teaching American History' grant to teach teachers with graduate level readings and guest lecturers. Maier's From Resistance to Revolution and American Scripture were both required reading.
In the 1990s, Maier was a charter member of "The Historical Society" group among American Historical Association membership who were concerned about restrictive political correctness and collegial civility. Boston Globe, October 16, 1998 Its intent was to "illuminate rather than polarize the study of history", see "The Historical Society purpose" They found a home at Boston University. The dual membership group was founded by Eugene Genovese (Atlanta U.), Stephen A. Schuker (UVA), and Donald Kagan (Yale). One explicit goal was to enlarge treatment of diplomatic and military history. The Times (London) Literary Supplement ("TLS 08 Dec 2000") called their journal, "history as it should be … serious attention … to serious subjects". Another reviewer, a former AHA President, called it "… the New York Review of Books for history", see "THS webpage". For the AHA reaction, see "Perspectives, Sep 1998". A non-tenured AHA member spoke to age differences, generalists, hierarchies, and concluded that both the AHA and the THS leadership were alike, short-changing young faculty with teaching challenges, where their part time positions depended on undergraduates enrolling in sufficient numbers each semester. (Twenty years later, see homepage links to 'teaching resources' for both college and secondary history at American Historical Association ("AHA"), Organization of American Historians ("OAH"), and The Historical Society ("THS"); viewed 05/07/2011.) In 1998, Maier was elected a history fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences."American Academy of Arts and Sciences" Membership has included Benjamin Franklin, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Charles Bulfinch, Alexander Hamilton, and John Quincy Adams. In 2010, she became one of two women honorary members of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts since 1947."CMS webpage"
Maier was the 2011 President of the Society of American Historians (SAH), an affiliate of the American Historical Association. It is dedicated to literary distinction in history and biography."Society of American Historians" (SAH) webpage viewed 'home' and 'about us.board' 05/01/2001.
In 2012, President Obama appointed Maier to the James Madison Memorial Fellowship Foundation Board of Trustees. The foundation was created by Congress in 1986 as part of the bicentennial celebration of the Constitution and offers graduate-level fellowships to secondary teachers to undertake a master's degree that emphasizes the study of the Constitution.jamesmadison.gov
Writing Maier's writing is characterized as serious and unadorned, with a crossover appeal from scholars to intelligent readers who enjoy a well-told story of well-researched scholarly history. In Ratification, Maier attributed her storytelling ability to Barbara Tuchman's insight that the writer can build suspense by never acknowledging a development until the characters in the narrative could know it.Woods, Gordon S., "The Great American Argument", The New Republic, December 24, 2010, in the magazine Dec 30, 2010, viewed 05/14/2011.
Professionally, her research-writing technique was self-described as looking for something comparative to come up with new questions. For example, in American Scripture, she found over 90 local declarations and then compared them to that of the Second Continental Congress. Popular support for the Declaration of Independence was built on how much was known and how widely the newspapers circulated. Massachusetts did not control Virginia, there was a confluence of ideas, assumptions, and similar responses to similar events.
As a popular history writer, she sought to understand her subjects as humans as well as their causes. Personal elements may not be important to public life, but they are the kinds of things people want to know. In Hamilton's famous phrase, he was "unfaithful to my wife, but not to my country." Historians always ask, What did they do for the public?
Teaching teachers Maier won fellowships to write curriculum for college courses and high school teachers. She believed that the interest in American history was not tapped in the curriculum of many states. As a democratic country, the U.S. should give any student a background knowledge of what happened to make the Declaration and the U.S. Constitution, and how their uses changed. Assumed things were not always so, students should understand how things can and do change. "Every time you understand what's distinctive about a different time, you are understanding what is distinctive about our time."
Personal life and death Maier met her husband Charles S. Maier at Harvard. After a year in England, they married and toured Europe together. Maier died in 2013 from lung cancer at the age of 75.
Scholarship
The Neo-Whigs
Maier's scholarship belongs to the "Neo-Whig" school of historiography founded by Bernard Bailyn in reaction to the "Progressive" historians. Her work is likened to that of Gordon S. Wood and Edmund S. Morgan. Radical English libertarian thought changed American beliefs and society and culture. The spreading ideas of natural rights and individual liberty distinctively altered politics, economy and society. These are explained with political analysis apart from ideology, incorporating English and French sources.Rothbard, Murray N., "Modern historians confront the American Revolution." Sat. May 12, 2007 https://mises.org/daily/2541 viewed 04/06/2011Johnson, K.C., in George Mason University's "History News Network" article, critiquing "America's Unfinished Revolution" symposium viewed 04/06/2011
Neo-Whigs of the 1950s forward avoided the triumphalism of the 1930s 'Whig historians' of the Revolution. The neo-Whigs added empire perspective, explored Patriot differences among colonies and within each colony, and added treatment of Tory elements.Martin, Raymond. "Progress in Historical Studies" http://www1.union.edu/martinr/documents/rm-progress50.pdf accessed 04/22/2011. pp. 6, 15 Maier's account of evolving Patriot differences is "Ratification: The People Debate the Constitution 1787–1788". Still, neo-Whigs have critics who see no causal imperative to revolution by Lockean ideals. Maier's account of the connections is found in American Scripture: The Making of the Declaration of Independence.
Neo-Whigs versus neo-Progressives
In contrast to the neo-Whigs, neo-Progressives explain many developments as a conservative return to Coke's 'Rights of Englishmen', a reaction to economic imperatives of expanding Empire.Reid, John Philip. "The concept of liberty" in the age of the American Revolution" pp. 10, 12