Todd Holmes
Todd Holmes is currently an Academic Specialist and Historian at the UC Berkeley Bancroft Library Oral History Center. He received his Ph.D. in history from Yale University in 2013. Over the years, his research has primarily focused on 20th century U.S. political, business, and labor history, as well as on California and the American West. At the Bill Lane Center, he will be completing a book manuscript tentatively titled The Fruits of Fracture: The Corporate West, The United Farm Workers Movement, and the Rise of Reaganism in American Politics, which uses the boycott campaigns of Cesar Chavez and the UFW as a lens to examine profound shifts in political economy and party politics between the 1960s and 1980s.
Awards
Henry S. McNeil Scholarship, Yale University (2012-2013)
Frederick W. Hilles Memorial Scholarship, Yale University (2011-2012)
Ardon L. Judd Scholarship in the Arts and Sciences, Yale University (2010-2011)
Richard J. Franke Fellowship in the Humanities, Yale University (2010-2011)
Bert M. Fireman Award—Best Article in the Western Historical Quarterly (2010)
Faculty Senate Graduate Endowment Scholarship, CSU Sacramento (2006)
George and Eleanor Craft History Graduate Scholarship, CSU Sacramento (2006)
Joseph A. McGowan Undergraduate History Writing Prize, CSU Sacramento (2005)
Publications
Selected Articles and Book Chapters
“Agriculture and The New Deal,” in Aaron D. Purcell, Brian McKnight, and James Humphreys, eds., Interpreting American History: The New Deal and the Great Depression (Kent State University Press, 2013)
“Farmer’s Market: Agribusiness and the Agrarian Imaginary in California and the Far West,”California History, vol. 90, no. 2 (summer 2013): 24-41
“Rivers of Gold, Valley of Conquest: The Business of Levies and Dams in the Capital City,” in Christopher Castaneda and Lee Simpson, eds., River City and Valley Life: An Environmental History of Sacramento, California (University of Pittsburg Press, 2013), 224-53
“Demise and Ascent: The Career of Thomas Kuchel and the Advent of the Reagan Right,”Boom: A Journal of California, volume 1, (winter 2011): 21-25
“The Economic Roots of Reaganism: Corporate Conservatives, Political Economy, and the United Farm Workers’ Movement, 1965-1970,” Western Historical Quarterly, volume 41, (spring 2010): 55-80
“The Swing Of The Political Pendulum: Congressman John Moss, the Democratic Party, and the United Farm Workers’ Grape Strike and Boycott, 1965-1970,” Southern California Quarterly,volume 88, (fall 2006): 295-338
Editorials, and Online Publications
“The Ever-Shrinking Middle Ground: Nelson Rockefeller in the Face of Reaganism,” Rockefeller Archive Center, 2011. http://www.rockarch.org/publications/resrep
“History Lesson 101: The Grand Old Myth of Fiscal Conservatism,” History News Network, 1 November 2010. https://historynewsnetwork.org/article/132931