Robert D. Johnston
2024 Cherry Award Semifinalist
Robert D. Johnston is Professor of History and Director of the Teaching of History program at the University of Illinois Chicago, where he has taught since 2003. He specializes in the teaching of history, the Progressive Era, and American democracy and populism. He has published the award-winning The Radical Middle Class: Populist Democracy and the Question of Capitalism (Princeton University Press) and numerous articles on the politics of historiography. He is current working on Pox, Populism, and Politics: Three Centuries of American Controversies over Vaccination (Oxford University Press). Johnston has edited or co-edited books on the American middle class, 20th-century American rural politics, and the politics of natural healing. He has served as co-editor of the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era and is currently co-editor of the teaching section of the Journal of American History.
Johnston has earned considerable recognition for his teaching. In 2020, he received the historical discipline’s highest award for teaching, the Eugene Asher Distinguished Teaching Award, from the American Historical Association. At UIC, he has also received UIC’s highest teaching award, the Award for Excellence in Teaching, as well the Graduate College’s Graduate Mentoring Award. He has also twice received the history department’s Shirley Bill Award for excellence in teaching. Johnston works extensively with pre-service as well as current K-12 teachers. In 2023, Johnston will serve as academic director for the sixth time for a multi-week NEH teachers’ institute on “Rethinking the Gilded Age and Progressivisms: Race, Capitalism, and Democracy, 1877-1920.” He previously directed three U.S. Department of Education Teaching of American History grants and participated in more than twenty other TAH projects. From 2017 to 2022, Johnston was on the College Board’s Advanced Placement U.S. History Development committee, serving as co-chair for three years. He has presented lectures and led seminars in Hong Kong, China, Vietnam, England, Norway, Israel, Turkey, Switzerland, and Germany.
Johnston also serves as vice-president and chief steward of UIC’s faculty union, UIC United Faculty. Most broadly, he strongly believes in the connections between teaching, scholarship, and democracy.