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University Writing Program

Columbian College of Arts & Sciences

Gordon Mantler

Gordon Mantler

Gordon Mantler

Associate Professor of Writing and of History - ON SABBATICAL

Contact:

Office Phone: 202-242-5171
Ames Hall 2100 Foxhall Road, NW, Ames 230 Washington DC 20007

Dr. Gordon Mantler is Associate Professor of Writing and of History at the George Washington University. He specializes in the history and rhetoric of 20th-century U.S. social justice movements, multiracial coalitions, public history, memorialization, and writing pedagogy in history classes. His first book, Power to the Poor: Black-Brown Coalition and the Fight for Economic Justice, 1960-1974, was the inaugural volume in the Justice, Power, and Politics series at the University of North Carolina Press in 2013. His most recent book, The Multiracial Promise: Harold Washington’s Chicago and the Democratic Struggle in Reagan’s America, was published in March 2023 with UNC Press and has won awards from the Organization of American Historians and the Illinois State Historical Society. HIs next project explores activism, labor, and memorialization in Washington, D.C. His scholarship has been supported by GW, Duke University, the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, the National Humanities Center, the Black Metropolis Research Consortium, and the Lyndon Johnson Presidential Library, among others.

HIST 3301W: Freedom Struggles in Black and Brown

UW 1020: Memorials, Museums, and Monuments

UW 1020: Writing Race, Filming History

UW 1020: Narratives of Struggle

Books

  • The Multiracial Promise: Harold Washington’s Chicago and the Democratic Struggle in Reagan’s America (University of North Carolina Press, 2023)
  • Power to the Poor: Black-Brown Coalition and the Fight for Economic Justice, 1960-1974 (University of North Carolina Press, 2013 cloth; 2015 paperback) – inaugural volume of Justice, Power, and Politics series, edited by Heather Thompson and Rhonda Williams


Articles & Book Chapters

  • “Revisiting Harold Washington’s Chicago,” UHA’s The Metropole blog, August 1, 2023
  • “Brandon Johnson Built a Coalition to Win in Chicago. Can He Keep it to Govern?” History News Network, May 14, 2023
  • “Chicago’s mayoral election feels like 1983 all over again — but it isn’t,” The Washington Post, March 8, 2023
  • Co-authored with Kelly King O’Brien, Nan Mulleneaux and Kristen Neuschel, “Reimagining Writing in History Courses,” Journal of American History 107:4 (March 2021): 942-954.
  • Co-authored with Rachel Riedner, “‘They’re Not Alone’: An Oral History of the Pennsylvania Faculty Strike of 2016,” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History 17:3 (Summer 2020): 8-18.
  • Co-authored with Rachel Riedner, “Neoliberal Higher Education: Background of the Pennsylvania State College and University Faculty Strike of 2016,” Academic Labor: Research and Artistry 2 (2018)
  • "Is It Time for the Kneeling Freedman Statue to Go?" in #Charlottesville: Before and Beyond, ed. Chris Howard-Woods, Colin Laidley, and Maryam Omidi (New York: New School for Social Research, 2018)
  • "'Organize the People': The 1975 City Council Races in Multiracial Chicago,” Journal of Civil and Human Rights 3:2 (Fall/Winter 2017)
  • "12 Years a Slave as a Bridge to Primary Source Research," Prompt: A Journal of Academic Writing Assignments 1:1 (2017): 29-34 (http://thepromptjournal.com/index.php/prompt)
  • "Rainbow Reformers: Black-Brown Activism and the Election of Harold Washington," in Civil Rights and Beyond: African American Activism and Latino/a Activism in the Twentieth-Century United States, ed. Brian Behnken (University of Georgia Press, 2016)
  • Power to the Poor: Black-Brown Coalition and the Fight for Economic Justice, 1960-1974 (University of North Carolina Press, 2013 cloth; 2015 paperback)
  • "Black, Brown, and Poor: Civil Rights and the Making of the Chicano Movement," in The Struggle in Black and Brown: African American/Mexican American Race Relations During the Civil Rights Era, ed. Brian Behnken (University of Nebraska Press, 2012)
  • "King’s Assassination Provided a Window of Opportunity for the Poor People’s Campaign," in Perspectives on Modern World History: The Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination, ed. Noah Berlatsky (Greenhaven Press, 2011), 111-122
  • "'The Press Did You In': The Poor People’s Campaign and the Mass Media," The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture 3:1 (Spring 2010) — Winning article for the Ronald T. and Gayla D. Farrar Media and Civil Rights Award, 2011

Ph.D., Duke University, 2008

M.A., University of South Florida, 2002