Michael Katz

Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History

Michael Katz is Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History and a Research Associate in the Population Studies Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Educated at Harvard, he has been a Guggenheim Fellow and a resident fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study, the Shelby Cullom Davis Center for Historical Studies (Princeton), the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars; he also has held a fellowship from the Open Society Institute. He is a fellow of the National Academy of Education, National Academy of Social Insurance, and the Society of American Historians. In 1999, he received a Senior Scholar Award—a lifetime achievement award—from the Spencer Foundation. From 1989-1995, he served as archivist to the Social Science Research Council's Committee for Research on the Urban Underclass and in 1992 was a member of the Task Force to Reduce Welfare Dependency appointed by the Governor of Pennsylvania. From 1991-1995, he was Chair of the History Department at the University of Pennsylvania; from 1983-1996 he directed or co-directed the University's undergraduate Urban Studies Program; in 1994, he founded the graduate certificate program in Urban Studies, which he co-directs. He is a past-president of the History of Education Society and president-elect of the Urban History Association.

His work has focused on three major areas: the history of American education (The Irony of Early School Reform [1968, reprinted with a new introduction, 2001]; Class, Bureaucracy, and Schools: The Illusion of Educational Change in America [1971, expanded edition 1975]; Reconstructing American Education [1987]); the history of urban social structure and family organization (The People of Hamilton, Canada West: Family and Class in a Mid-Nineteenth Century City [1975, winner Albert C. Corey Prize, American and Canadian Historical Associations]; The Social Organization of Early Industrial Capitalism [1981]); and the history of social welfare and poverty (Poverty and Policy in American History [1983]; In the Shadow of the Poorhouse: A Social History of Welfare in America [1986, expanded edition 1996]; The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare [1990, a finalist for the American Sociological Association's Distinguished Book Award]; The "Underclass" Debate: Views from History [1993]; and Improving Poor People: the Welfare State, the "Underclass," and Urban Schools as History [1995]); with Christoph Sachsse, he has edited The Mixed Economy of Social Welfare: England, Germany, and the United States from the 1870s to the 1930s (1996). With Michelle Fine and Elaine Simon, he is author of the essay, "Poking Around: Outsiders View Chicago School Reform" - based on five years of periodic interviews and observations (Teachers College Record, Fall 1997). With Thomas Sugrue, he edited, W.E.B. Du Bois, Race, and the City: "The Philadelphia Negro" and Its Legacy (1998).

An updated version of his book, The Price of Citizenship: Redefining the American Welfare State (Metropolitan/Holt 2001; Owl Books, 2002) was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2008. His most recent book, written with Mark J. Stern, One Nation Divisible: What American Was and What It Is Becoming , was published by the Russell Sage Foundation in 2006; the paperback edition was released in 2008. Currently, he is working on immigration, with a focus on Philadelphia in the post-WWII period. He is a co-author of a report on immigration to Metropolitan Philadelphia to be published by the Brookings Institution in November 2008.

His research has been supported by the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, Canada Council, Behavioral Science Research Institute at York University, National Institute of Mental Health, National Institute of Education, National Endowment for the Humanities, Social Science Research Council, Rockefeller Foundation, Spencer Foundation, and the Research Foundation of the University of Pennsylvania.