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I have been active in social movements since the appearance of the civil rights movement in my hometown of Champaign, Illinois, in 1960, and activity within the civil rights, peace, environmental, and labor movements, along with alternative cultures, has guided much of my research activity. The first and second journals that I edited and published during the 1960s and 1970s stressed the history of radical movements and the progressive potential of popular culture, respectively. At present, I am a regular contributor to two journals, TIKKUN and CNS (an environmental journal), while writing also for a wide variety of publications including The Chronicle of Higher Education, the San Francisco Chronicle (book section), The Guardian (UK), The Nation, New Labor Forum, The Oral History Review, among others.

My work has also been connected frequently with oral history: in 1976 I founded Oral History of the American Left at Tamiment Library, New York University; I created an oral history archive at the Rhode Island Historical Society around working class life in Rhode Island; and my students, in the last several years, have begun a major project that we call "Underground Rhode Island," the alternative cultures and arts of Rhode Island, encompassing interracial, gay and lesbian cultures, experimental art, music, comics and so on.

From the 30 volumes I have published, I would mention five on the history of the Hollywood Blacklist victims and their work (best known: Radical Hollywood); four biographies, including authorized biographies of the Pan Africanist C.L.R. James and the noir filmmaker, Abraham Polonsky; the Encyclopedia of the American Left (2 editions); and several works on Rhode Island. Collections of my personal and editorial activities are held at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin and Tamiment Library, New York University. Four more works, including pictorial biographies of Emma Goldman and Isadora Duncan, a graphic version of Howard Zinn's People's History of the US and a history of the Students for a Democratic Society are now in the first stages of production with a variety of artists.

Download Paul Buhle, Emeritus's Curriculum Vitae in PDF Format