David M M Henkin

Since David Henkin joined the history faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1997, he has taught and written about the sorts of subjects that rarely make it into traditional textbooks. He has offered entire courses on baseball, Broadway, immigration, time, leisure, the road, family life, news, and urban literature while publishing books and essays about street signs, paper money, junk mail, intimate correspondence, calendars, and temporal rhythms in the nineteenth century. The...See more

Since David Henkin joined the history faculty at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1997, he has taught and written about the sorts of subjects that rarely make it into traditional textbooks. He has offered entire courses on baseball, Broadway, immigration, time, leisure, the road, family life, news, and urban literature while publishing books and essays about street signs, paper money, junk mail, intimate correspondence, calendars, and temporal rhythms in the nineteenth century. The task of integrating that kind of material into the traditional narrative of the American past has been the singular challenge of his professional life. David holds a BA from Yale University and a PhD from U.C. Berkeley, and he was awarded Berkeley's Distinguished Teaching Award in the Social Sciences. Beyond the Berkeley campus, David teaches classes on the Talmud, plays cards, eats lots of fish and berries, and roots passionately for the St. Louis Cardinals. Raised in New York, where his family still lives, he makes his home with friends and community in San Francisco. See less