Essays
Joseph Amato,
“Reflections on Conservation on the Northern Plains: From Farm Field to Biosphere," in Conserving Conservation (Sioux Falls: Augustana University Center for Western Studies Press, 2017).
“Local History: A Way to Place and Home,” in Why Place Matters, eds. Wilfred McClay and Ted McAllister (Encounter Books, 2014), 215-237.
“Suffering, and the Promise of a World without Pain,” Suffering and Bioethics, eds. Ronald Green and Nathan (Oxford University Press, 2014), 61-86.
“The Deepest Sense: A Cultural History of Touch,” Constance Classen, Fides et Historia (Winter/Spring, 2014), 76-81.
Family Trees, François Weil, Fides et HIstoria, Vol. 46: 1 (Winter/Spring, 2014), 129-132.
On the Agency of Dreams, Charles Stewart, Vol 45: 2 (Summer/Fall, 2013), 92-96.
“Local and Regional History: A Way to Place, Time, and Self,” in Why Place Matters: Geography, Identity, and Civic Life in Modern America, eds. by Wilfred M. McClay and Ted V. McAllister, (Encounter Books, 2014).
“Suffering, and the Promise of a World without Pain,” in Suffering in Bioethical Decision-Making, eds. Ronald M. Green and Nathan J. Palpant (Oxford University Press, 2014).
"From the Ordinary to the Extraordinary," History News (Spring, 2013).
“The Extraordinary Ordinary and the Changing Face of Place,” Historically Speaking (February 2013), the first of three essays to reflect on place, and American history, supported by the Earhart Foundation.
“Then and Then Again,” Historically Speaking (November, 2011) Historically Speaking 12.5 (2011); Miller Award for best essay in political and intellectual history.
“A Superficial Evocation of Our Times,” Historically Speaking vol. 10 issue 4 (September 12, 2009).
“The Young Stephen Tonsor: Teacher, Historicist, and Conservative,” Modern Age (Spring, 2008).
“Memorials and Commemoration,” “Walking,” and “Dust,” three entries in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Modern History (2008).
“Why Family History?” Historically Speaking (January/February, 2008).
“Rethinking Family History,” Minnesota History (Winter, 2007-2008).
“Little Things Mean A Lot: The Histories of Things, or Histories of Everything,” Historically Speaking (July/August, 2004).
“Rethinking Local History: An Interview with ." Historically Speaking 5.1 (2003).
With Anthony Amato, “Minnesota, Real and Imagined: A View from the Countryside,”Daedulus, Vol. 129, No. 3(Summer, 2000); republished in Minnesota, Real and Imagined: Essays on the State and Its Culture (Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2001).
“Politics of Sufferings,” International Social Science Reviews, Vol. 69: Nos. 1 & 2 (1994).
“Death and the Stories We Don’t Have,” Monist, Vol. 76, No. 2 (April, 1993).
“Victims without Tears: Democracy and the Politics of Pity,” Crisis (February, 1993).
“Suffering,” Encyclopedia of Adult Development, ed. Robert Kastenbaum (Oryx, 1993).
“A World Without Intimacy: A Portrait of a Time Before We Were Intimate Individuals and Lovers,” International Social Science Review (Autumn, 1986).
“Freedom, Fatalism, The State,” The Phoenix. Vol. 9, Nos, 1 & 2 (1983).
“Danilo Dolci: A Nonviolent Reformer,” Italian Americana (Spring/Summer, 1978); also found in Nonviolent Action and Social Change, eds. Severyn Bruyn and Paula Rayman (Irvington, 1979.)
With David Nass and T. C. Radzialowski “The Women of Willmar,” The Progressive (August, 1978).
“Parents and Grandparents: We Are all Immigrants and Migrants,”Great Lakes Review (Winter, 1976).
“Danilo Dolci,” Minnesota Teacher (Spring, 1974).
“Danilo Dolci, a Poetic Modernizer,” Worldview (December, 1973).