Faculty and Staff
Nancy Beck Young
Moores Professor of History & Director of the Center for Public History
Nancy Beck Young is a historian of twentieth-century American politics, who also has interests in public history and digital humanities. Her research questions how ideology has shaped public policy and political institutions. Much of her work involves study of Congress, the presidency, electoral politics, and first ladies. Dr. Young is also interested in Texas political history, especially Texans in Washington. She joined the faculty of the University of Houston in 2007 after teaching for ten years at McKendree College in Illinois. She has held fellowships at the Clements Center for Southwest Studies at Southern Methodist University and at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, D.C. Along with colleague Leandra Zarnow, she was awarded funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities to host a 2017 Summer Seminar for College and University Teachers entitled Gender, the State, and the 1977 International Women’s Year Conference. In 2021, Young and Zarnow received a Collaborative Research Grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to fund work on Sharing Stories from 1977: Putting the National Women’s Conference on the Map.
Teaching
Dr. Young has taught a wide range of undergraduate courses, including the second half of the U.S. survey, the Age of Roosevelt, Twentieth Century Texans in Washington, Liberals versus Conservatives: Twentieth Century U.S. Politics from FDR to the present, and Electing Presidents in the Twentieth Century. Her classes routinely address the following issues: the development of American political institutions, the impact of public policy on the lives of average people, and the role of ideology in American politics. In each of her classes, Dr. Young uses a variety of methods to help students deepen their appreciation for American history and their critical thinking and writing skills. She has taught several twentieth century graduate level research and reading seminars on U.S. political history, U.S. historiography, American ideologies, the history of public policy, contemporary history, and readings in public history.
Research Interests
Dr. Young’s research is divided between work on the Sharing Stories project and writing a biography of former Speaker of the House and Vice President John Nance Garner. Sharing Stories presents the stories of the almost 2000 participants in the National Women’s Conference through short student-written biographies, oral histories, and demographic data. The project demonstrates the power of women’s political activism at the grassroots. Young’s biography of Garner argues that the former vice president, an often overlooked and caricatured politician, was crucial to modernizing the vice presidency, securing passage of much of the New Deal, and later raising questions about the efficacy of it.
Selected Publications
- Two Suns of the Southwest: Lyndon Johnson, Barry Goldwater, and the 1964 Battle between Liberalism and Conservatism (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2019).
- Why We Fight: Congress and the Politics of World War II (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2013). Winner of the Guittard Book Award for Historical Scholarship (2014).
- Encyclopedia of the U.S. Presidency, 6 vols. (New York: Facts on File, 2013).
- The Documentary History of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidency, 25 Vols., (Bethesda, Md.: Lexis-Nexis, 2005-2016).
- Lou Henry Hoover: Activist First Lady (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004).
- Wright Patman: Populism, Liberalism, and the American Dream (Dallas: Southern Methodist University Press, 2000). Winner of the D.B. Hardeman Prize for the best book on Congress (2002).
- (with Lewis L. Gould), Texas, Her Texas: The Life and Times of Frances Goff (Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 1997).