Academic Positions

2007-Present  | Professor of History, Pacific University

2003-2007 | Lecturer, History and Literature Concentration, Harvard University

Education

PhD, History | University of Rochester, Rochester, NY

MA, History | University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA

Background

Lisa Bradford earned her master’s degree from the University of Virginia in modern German history, with a minor field in Early Modern Europe. Her doctoral training from the University of Rochester centered on modern American intellectual and cultural history. She offers classes on a wide range of topics, including the history of capitalism, conservatism, conspiracy theories, emotions, and politics. Her work has been supported by the German Historical Society, Friedrich Ebert Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and Harry Ransom Center at UT-Austin.  

Professor Bradford’s current project, "THINK or Die": Ezra Pound, Conspiracy Theories, and the Fate of Democracy, analyzes authors, academics, and national security experts as they grappled with seismic disruptions in the first half of the twentieth century. In a 1942 radio broadcast over Italian radio, Ezra Pound told audiences that they needed to make a choice between dynamic fascism or weak democracy. The stakes could not be higher: “You will have to THINK or Die." This project unbraids two strands, both the incandescent and the distorted, of Pound’s convictions about cognition as they reflected and refracted the zeitgeist. The book investigates the resonance of the poet’s ideas concerning civilization, economic aesthetics, higher education, and domestic security in the early Cold War and today, as witnessed by the ascent of the CasaPound Italia (House of Pound, Italy) movement.

Professor Bradford has published two books as well as numerous articles, book reviews, and essays for both academic and popular audiences. She has been invited to deliver lectures on her expertise across the country and in Europe. 
 

Publications

Books:

THINK or Die: Ezra Pound, Conspiracy Theories, and the Fate of Democracy (In-Progress)

Hodgson Russ: The Making of a Modern Law Firm in Buffalo and Beyond (2024)

The Gospel of Beauty in the Progressive Era: Reforming American Verse and Values (Palgrave Macmillan 2011)

Articles, Essays, and Book Chapters:

Conceiving Liberty in Pax Americana, Book Review of Louis Menand’s The Free World: Art and Thought in the Cold War, Reviews in American History (December 2022)

From Poverty to Professor, Mount Holyoke Alumnae Quarterly (Fall 2022)

Contempt Translator for Hire! Medium (29 October 2020): https://medium.com/arc-digital/contempt-translator-for-hire-c635dd118fb5

Reading Woody Allen, Society for U.S. Intellectual History Blog (May 2020): https://s-usih.org/2020/05/reading-woody-allen/

Ezra Pound's Psychiatric Salon, Reviews in American History (September 2019)

From Tall Ideas Dancing to Trump's Twitter Ranting: Reckoning the Intellectual History of Conservatism, in American Labyrinth: Intellectual History for Complicated Times. Eds. Raymond Haberski and Andrew Hartman (Cornell University Press 2018)

Critical Thinking as Cold War Weapon: Anxiety, Terror, and the Fate of Democracy in Cold War America, Journal of American Culture (March 2017)

"Woody Allen and Wealth," Montreal Review (July 2013)

Book Review of Michelle Nickerson, "Mothers of Conservatism: Women and the Postwar Right" (Princeton) in Women in Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 (October 2013)

Book Review of Daniel T. Rodgers, Age of Fracture, History News Network (February 2011): https://www.historynewsnetwork.org/blog/136980

Welcome Back, 1970s,History News Network (December 2008)

Beauty and William Braithwaite, Callaloo: A Journal of African Diaspora (Selected as "Notable Essay of 2006" Best American Essays 2007. Ed. David Foster Wallace) (Spring 2006)

Encouraging Verse: William S. Braithwaite and the Poetics of Race, New England Quarterly. Reprinted in Harlem Renaissance, Vol. 1: A Gale Critical Companion (March 2011)

Presentations

“From Luminous Details to Economic Aesthetics,” Ezra Pound International Conference, Dorf Tirol/Merano Italy (July 2025)

“Tilting at Capitalism: The Poetic Quest for Ethics in Modern Economics,” Newbury Library History of Capitalism Seminar, Chicago, IL (April 2023)

“Fascism and Cold War America,” Society for US Intellectual History, Boston (November 2022)

"Ezra Pound Thinking," Ezra Pound International Conference, Kyoto, Japan, online (June 2022)

"United States of Contempt: The Emotional Threat to Democracy," Society for U.S. Intellectual History Conference (February 2021)

"The First Culture War: A Prize to Ezra Pound, Treason, and the Fight for Democracy," American Rothermere Institute, Oxford University (June 2019)

"Idealism, Politics, and Aesthetics," University of Rochester Humanities Center (May 2018)

Roundtable discussion of my work "Ezra Pound and the Bollingen Prize Controversy: Literary Modernism, National Security, and American Culture in the Cold War," Great Lakes History Conference, Grand Valley State University, (2018)

"Think or Die: Postwar Intellectuals Confront the Abyss," Organization of American Historians Conference, New Orleans (April 2017)

"The Intellectual History of Conservatism and the Debate Over Ideas in America," Workshop on New Frontiers/New Currents at Indiana University/Purdue University Arts and Humanities Institute and American Studies Program (July 2016)

Panel Member, Roundtable Discussion of Mark Greif's Age of the Crisis of Man, Society for U.S. Intellectual History Conference, Stanford University (October 2016)

"Cold War Cultural Politics: Public Intellectuals and the Bollingen Prize Controversy of 1949," Conference on Public Intellectuals, Harvard University (2014)

Moderator, Plenary Session on "Conservatism and Intellectual History: Pasts and Futures," Society for U.S. Intellectual History Conference, UC-Irvine (November 2013)

"A Class of Women: Reading, Response, and Reception," University of Rochester Symposium (October 2012)

"Tall Ideas Dancing: Compassion, Capitalism, and the Aesthetics of Conservatism," Organization of American Historians Conference (April 2012)

"Intolerance of the Intellectuals: Peter Viereck’s Shame and Glory," Conference on Public Intellectuals, Harvard University (April 2012)

"Reconstructing Reason: Values, Virtues, and the Moral Imagination in Postwar America," The Enlightenment between Europe and the United States: Twentieth-Century Tensions, Center for Advanced Studies, Ludwig Maximilian University, Munich, Germany (May 2011)

Panel Member, "Roundtable: Daniel Rodgers, Age of Fracture, U.S. Intellectual History Conference," Center for the Humanities, CUNY Graduate Center (November 2011)

"The Postwar Literary Turn in American Politics," U.S. Intellectual History Conference, CUNY Graduate Center (November 2011)

"Peter Viereck's Mid-Century 'New Conservatism': Uncautiously, Daring, Free-Thinking Lovers of Beauty," U.S. Intellectual History Conference, Center for the Humanities, City University of New York (October 2010)

"Reading Ezra Pound in the Cold War: The Bollingen Prize Controversy of 1949," Ezra Pound International Conference, Rome, Italy (July 2009)

"Theodore Roosevelt and the Modern Bard," Popular Culture/American Culture Annual Conference, San Francisco, CA (March 2008)

Moderator, Humanities Institute Conference, "The Other Side of Reason: The History of Madness Today," SUNY Buffalo (October 2008)

"Cultural Conservative: Peter Viereck and European History" Mount Holyoke College, S. Hadley, MA, November 2006.

"New Critics, New York Intellectuals, and the Cultural Cold War," History and Literature Department Seminar, Harvard University (December 2006)

"Poetry in the Progressive Era," American Literary History Conference, Boston, MA (March 2005)

Public Lectures

Panelist, "Conservative Thinkers of the 20th Century," symposium at Grand Valley State University in Grand Rapids, Michigan, (2016)

"Dangerous Ideas: The 2016 Election Edition," The Athenaeum, Indianapolis, IN (July 2016)

"Cultural Conservative: Peter Viereck and European History," Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, MA (November 2006)

Honors, Awards, Grants, and Fellowships

2020, 2025 | Faculty Development Grant, Pacific University

2018, 2020, 2023, 2024, 2025 | McCormack Fellowship, Pacific University

2011 | Junior Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching and Scholarship

2009 | Wye Faculty Seminar, The Aspen Institute

2008 | Durot Fellowship, Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin

2008 & 2012 | Junior Faculty Development Award, Pacific University

2006 | NEH Summer Institute/W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University

2004-05 | American Academy of Arts & Sciences: Visiting Scholar

2002 | Dexter Perkins Prize in Intellectual and Cultural History, University of Rochester

2002 | Curtis Peck Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching, University of Rochester

1998 | Seven Society Graduate Fellowship for Superb Teaching, University of Virginia

1995-1996 | Friedrich Ebert Stifung Research Fellowship (SDP), Berlin, Germany

1995 | German Historical Institute/German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) Fellowship, Germany

Classes Offered

Surveys

• Conspiracy Theories
• Political History of Emotions
• U.S. History since 1865
• American Popular Culture
• Leaders and Leadership: History and How-To
• Sports in America

Seminars

• Get Rich! Wealth in American History
• Cold War America
• World War II
• History of Conservatism
• Mentoring in the Humanities
• Historical Research
• Historical Thinking

First-Year Seminars     

• Cold War Minds: Thought Control, UFOs, and the Deep State, 1940-1963
• Success: History, and How-To
• Minds, Markets, and Morals
• Ethics, Character, and Culture
• Wild Kingdoms: Animals, Stories, and Selves
• The Art of Memoir

Role-Playing/Reacting to the Past

• American Revolution, 1775-1776
• Constitutional Convention, 1787
• Revolutionary Paris, 1791