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Christopher Phelps

American historian

Correspondence, annotated notebooks and portrait silhouettes prepared for research
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Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionAug 30, 2026
Entity authorityQ5113061 ↗
Source-derived summary

Christopher Phelps (born 1965) is an American political and intellectual historian of the twentieth century. The subjects of his research and writing include philosophical pragmatism, class and labor in social thought, the American Left, and race and sexuality in American history. He teaches in the department of American and Canadian Studies at the University of Nottingham in England.

Books

Sole author

Young Sidney Hook: Marxist and Pragmatist, Cornell University Press, 1997; 2d ed., University of Michigan Press, 2005.

Co-authored

Radicals in America: The US Left Since the Second World War, Cambridge University Press, 2015.

Edited or introduced

Marxism and America: New Appraisals, University of Manchester, 2021.

The Jungle, by Upton Sinclair, Bedford/St. Martin's, 2005.

Race and Revolution, by Max Shachtman, Verso, 2003.

Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx, by Sidney Hook, Prometheus, 2002.

Editorial summary

The public source identifies “Christopher Phelps” as american historian. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Christopher, Phelps and American.

Editorial reviewA useful biographical orientation record, particularly for establishing names, roles and a first chronology. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1965, 1997, 2005, 2015—that can be checked directly. The linked authority record independently contributes the date 1965-01-01. Its value is orientation rather than verdict, with Christopher, Phelps and American providing the first useful test.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

A short description can identify a subject without explaining its stakes. For “Christopher Phelps”, the useful work is to connect “american historian” to the records capable of establishing context and consequence.

Evidence profile

Chronology provides the most reliable spine for this subject; interpretation should follow only after identities and dates are secure. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5113061. VIAF identifies the subject as 156874. The Library of Congress control number is n97058759. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1965, 1997, 2005 and 2015.

Critical limits

Public reputation and documentary evidence do not always develop together; absence from a summary is not evidence of historical absence. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Read biographical claims against dates, named institutions and the cited references. Distinguish a subject’s later reputation from evidence produced during their lifetime.

Best used for
  • Establishing names and roles
  • Building a first chronology
  • Locating cited institutions
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Personal papers, civil or court records, institutional files and the scholarship cited by the source.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Christopher Phelps”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Christopher Phelps primary sources, Christopher Phelps archive and Christopher research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Christopher Phelps” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.