Profile:

Clarence E. Wunderlin, Jr., is a specialist in the history of political thought and U.S. political economy. He began his career as a National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC) Editing Fellow for the 1982-83 academic year and served as an editorial assistant and assistant editor on the George C. Marshall Papers project from 1982 to 1987. In 1988, Wunderlin came to Kent State University to edit The Papers of Senator  Robert A. Taft,a four-volume, selected edition supported by awards from the Ohio Board of Regents, the Louise Taft Semple Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the NHPRC, and published by the Kent State University Press (1997-2006).

Wunderlin’s most recent research focuses on the conceptual scaffolding that frames those intellectual traditions utilized by Old Right conservatives in their “ordinary political discourse,” especially their political speeches, campaign pamphlets, and press releases. His current project, “Conservatism in Context: Senator Robert A. Taft, Political Argument, and Republican Party Political Discourse, 1935-1953,” is a collection of eight self-authored essays exploring how Taft and other G. O. P. leaders employed such key concepts as “individual liberty,” “voluntary cooperation,” “equal opportunity,” home market “protection,” and “progress” to contest the theory and practice of New Deal liberalism and liberal internationalism.