Language of Material: English

Contributing Institution: Department of Special Collections and University Archives

Title: Johnson (John J.) Papers

Creator: Johnson, John J.

Identifier/Call Number: SC1537

Physical Description: 6.5 Linear Feet

Date (inclusive): 1979-2001

Physical Location: Special Collections and University Archives materials are stored offsite and must be paged 48 hours in advance. For more information on paging collections, see the department's website: http://library.stanford.edu/spc.

While University Archives is the owner of the physical and/or digital items, permission to examine collection materials is not an authorization to publish. These materials are made available for use in research, teaching, and private study. Any transmission or reproduction beyond that allowed by fair use requires permission from the owners of rights, heir(s) or assigns.

[identification of item] John J. Johnson Papers (SC1537). Dept. of Special Collections and University Archives, Stanford University Libraries, Stanford, Calif.

Administrative transfer, 2020.

John J. Johnson (1912-2004) was a pioneering historian and mentor in the field of Latin American studies whose career at Stanford spanned several decades. Johnson grew up in White Swan, Washington on the Yakama Indian Reservation and was the first member of his family to attend college, graduating from Central Washington College of Education in 1940. After receiving his MA and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, Johnson arrived at Stanford where he served as a professor of history from 1946 to 1977. At the time of his entrance into the field, Latin American studies engaged few scholars and produced historical textbooks which Johnson regarded as "ethnocentric," "weak on analysis," and "distort[ing] history." Johnson would ultimately contribute significant political, historical, and interdisciplinary analysis to the base of Latin American scholarship through a number of texts, particularly his seminal work Political Change in Latin America: The Emergence of the Middle Sectors (1958). He also played a key role in the development of Stanford's Center for Latin American Studies, serving as its first longterm director from 1966 to 1972. Following his retirement from Stanford, Johnson spent five years as the managing editor of the Hispanic American Historical Review. He published Latin America in Caricature in 1980, which featured early academic analysis of the racial, gendered, and social implications of political cartoons created about Latin America by foreign artists. In 1990, Johnson published A Hemisphere Apart: The Foundations of United States Policy toward Latin America, which examined the period of American foreign policy between 1815 and 1830 as a basis for its future iterations. Finally, Johnson worked for several years on a manuscript entitled Foreign Images of the U.S.: 1860-1992: A Cartoon History, which explored external depictions of the United States in political cartoons and was not yet published by the time of his passing in 2004.

Sources

Johnson, John J. "Remarks by John J. Johnson" LASA Forum: Latin American Studies Association 15, no. 2 (1984): 8-11. Accessed August 12, 2021. https://forum.lasaweb.org/files/vol1-vol36/LASAForum-Vol15-Issue2.pdf.

Drake, Paul W. "John J. Johnson (1912-2004)" Hispanic American Historical Review 85, no. 2 (2005): 299-301. Accessed August 12, 2021. https://read.dukeupress.edu/hahr/article/85/2/299/27253/John-J-Johnson-1912-2004.

The John J. Johnson Papers contain 6.5 linear feet of materials documenting Johnson's personal and professional life after his retirement from Stanford in 1977. The collection includes correspondence, lectures, and research and drafts for his works Latin America in Caricature (1980) and A Hemisphere Apart: The Foundations of United States Policy toward Latin America (1990), and Foreign Images of the U.S.: 1860-1992: A Cartoon History (unpublished). Among the materials for this final text are over 1.5 linear feet of political cartoons printed in the 19th and 20th centuries. Please see additional Scope and Contents notes for further information on each series and for content warnings regarding racist imagery and language use.