The Mindful Professor

Matt Warshauer is a professor of history at Central Connecticut State University, his under-graduate alma mater, where he learned that passionate, devoted professors can change lives. Originally bored and uninterested in school, he bounced around the country with his family, attending three different high schools in four years – from California to Illinois and then ultimately to Connecticut. He didn’t even want to attend college, but compromised with his parents by going to Norwalk Community College for a few semesters and then transferring to Central.   

Even upon his initial arrival at CCSU, Warshauer’s focus was not particularly academic. He studied marketing, but majored in partying. It wasn’t until he met professors like Norton Mezvinsky (History) and Barry Leeds (English) that Warshauer’s mind was turned on. He has been fascinated with American culture ever since and, basically, trying to figure out how the United States got to where it is today. One of his key interests is the paradox – a core dispute about the meaning of the nation – that has always existed in American society and which is so apparent today with the election of Donald Trump and the extreme divisions that cut to the core of who we are as a people.    

Warshauer’s study of “the paradox” first focused on early American political and constitutional history, particularly from the nation’s founding to the Civil War. Books and articles on Andrew Jackson, slavery, and the political divisions that led to the Civil War were the result. (See below)    Most recently, Warshauer has turned his focus on 9/11 and memory. See the 9/11 project on which he is currently working.