Bringing the Civic Back in: Zane L. Miller and American Urban History

With the passing of Zane L. Miller in 2016, academia lost a renowned scholar and one of the key founders of new urban history--a branch of the discipline that placed urban life at the center of American history and treated the city as an arena for civic and political action. He was a devoted, tireless mentor who published or fostered dozens of books and articles on urban history. He also co-founded Temple University Press’ foundational series Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy.

Bringing the Civic Back In provides a critical overview, appreciation, and extension of Miller’s work as scholar, editor, mentor, colleague, and citizen. Included are three excerpts from Miller’s final, unfinished work, in which he presented cities as the source of a civic nationalism he viewed as fundamental to the development of American democracy. The editors--along with contributors Robert B. Fairbanks and Charles Lester--reflect on the life and work of their friend as well as his role in creating a Cincinnati school of urban history. These original essays by practitioners of Miller’s approach highlight the power of ideas to shape social change.

Larry Bennett is Professor Emeritus of Political Science at DePaul University. He is the coeditor of The Many Futures of Work: Rethinking Expectations and Breaking Molds (Temple University Press) and of the press’s Urban Life, Landscape, and Policy book series. In 2017 and 2018 Professor Bennett was interim Executive Director of North Branch Works, a neighborhood economic development organization in Chicago.
John D. Fairfield is Professor of History at Xavier University and the author of The Public and its Possibilities: Triumphs and Tragedies in the American City (Temple), The Mysteries of the Great City: The Politics of Urban Design, 1877-1937, and Oakley: From Hamlet to the Center of Cincinnati.
Patricia Mooney-Melvin is Associate Professor of History at Loyola University Chicago. She is the coeditor of Making Sense of the City: Local Government, Civic Culture, and Community Life in Urban America; editor of American Community Organizations: A Historical Dictionary; coauthor of The Urbanization of Modern America: A Brief History, 2nd Edition; and author of The Organic City: Urban Definition and Neighborhood Organization 1880-1920.