Ralph Henry Gabriel

Ralph Henry Gabriel (April 29, 1890 – April 25, 1987) was an American historian. He held the Sterling Professor Emeritus of History at Yale University and was the founding father of the American Studies Association.

Early life and education Gabriel was born on April 29, 1890, in Reading, New York, to parents Cleveland and Alta Monroe Gabriel. He earned his Bachelor of Arts, Masters of Arts and Ph.D. at Yale University before serving in the U.S. Army Infantry during World War I.

Career Gabriel joined the faculty of Yale in 1915. Simultaneously, Gabriel was hired as a general editor of The Pageant of America, an eventual 15-volume series of pictorial history of the development of the United States.

In 1931, he collaborated with Stanley Thomas Williams, an English professor, to teach a course entitled "American Thought and Civilization." He claimed the course "stressed the systematic study of the history of the viewpoints of American writers, scholars, statesmen and reformers." In 1938, Gabriel worked alongside Mabel B. Casner, a Connecticut schoolteacher, to publish The Rise of American Democracy.

A few years later, in 1940, Gabriel published The course of American democratic thought through the Ronald Press Company. Although writing as a historian, Gabriel used anthropology to examine how America's "climate of opinion" affected society. He would go on to serve as director of Yale Studies for Returning Service Men from 1944 to 1946 and lecture at the United States School of Military Government. In 1946, Gabriel founded a new department at Yale, entitled the American Studies Department, and later went on to be a founding father of the American Studies Association. However, Gabriel would end up resigning from the American Studies Department in protest during the Cold War. Gabriel was upset that Yale accepted a $500,000 donation on the condition the department focus on "the fundamental principles of American freedom in the field of politics and economics in order to combat the meaning of foreign philosophies".

In 1958, Gabriel served as a committee member on the US National Commission for UNESCO and was a US delegate at the UNESCO conference in Paris. During his lengthy tenure at Yale, Gabriel also served as the editor of the Library of Congress Series in American Civilization.

Awards and honors In 1958, Gabriel was the recipient of an honorary degree from Williams College.

In 1966, Gabriel was awarded a DeVane Medal from Yale's Phi Beta Kappa chapter. In 1975, he was the recipient of the Wilbur Cross Medal for "distinguished achievements in scholarship, teaching, academic administration, and public service".

Every year, the American Studies Association awards the Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize to the best doctoral dissertation in American studies, ethnic studies, or women's studies. Elias Boudinot, Cherokee & his America (1941) The Rise of American Democracy (1951) The course of American democratic thought: an intellectual history since 1815 (1956) Traditional values in American life (1960) American values: continuity and change (1974)