UIC historian honored for book on Buckley and Mailer

Kevin Schultz, UIC professor of history, Catholic studies, and religious studies. Photo: Joshua Clark

Kevin Schultz, professor of history, Catholic studies, and religious studies at the University of Illinois at Chicago, has received the Robert F. Lucid Award from the Norman Mailer Society.

The annual award, given for the most outstanding contribution to Mailer scholarship during the previous year, recognizes Schultz’s 2015 book, “Buckley and Mailer: The Difficult Friendship That Shaped the Sixties.”

“Buckley and Mailer” examines the intertwined lives of right-wing firebrand William F. Buckley, Jr. and left-wing Mailer as a way to better understand the 1960s.

“‘Buckley and Mailer’ meets this criterion not only because it exemplifies careful research and use of archives, but also because it presents an engaging narrative that has broad appeal,” the society said in a statement. “Professor Schultz has conducted the first extended study of Mailer and Buckley’s relationship and contextualized it in a way that brings back to life the multitude of people, scenes, situations, and events that embodied the nineteen-sixties.”

Schultz is also credited for presenting Mailer in “newly detailed focus during a crucial era of American cultural history” as the nature of the country’s political discourse changes.

At UIC since 2007, Schultz studies and teaches 20th century American history with special interests in religion, ethno-racial history, and American intellectual and cultural life. He is the current president of the Society for U.S. Intellectual History.

He is a widely published author, including the book “Tri-Faith America: How Postwar Catholics and Jews Held America to its Protestant Promise” and “HIST,” a popular college-level textbook.

Schultz earned a bachelor’s degree from Vanderbilt University and master’s and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.

The Norman Mailer Society, a nonprofit organization, was founded in 2003 to celebrate Norman Mailer, author of 40 books and the chronicler of the American Century. It has approximately 300 members and meets annually for three days for discussion about the life, work and reputation of the late author.