© The contents of this finding aid are the copyright of the University of Chicago Library
© 2010 University of Chicago Library
The collection is open for research.
When quoting material from this collection, the preferred citation is: Keen, Mike. Papers, [Box #, Folder #], Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library
Mike Keen served as a Professor of Sociology and Anthropology at Indiana University South Bend, where he joined the faculty in 1987 and retired in 2016. His research and teaching interests center on sustainability and the sociology of science; he is the founding director of the IU South Bend Center for a Sustainable Future, which offers a minor in Sustainability Studies. He is also accredited in Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED).
His book Stalking the Sociological Imagination: J. Edgar Hoover's FBI Surveillance of American Sociology (1999) won the North Central Sociological Association's 2000 Scholarly Achievement Award. His teaching has earned him the IU President's Award for Distinguished Teaching.
This collection contains Keen's copies of FBI files kept on prominent intellectuals, primarily sociologists, suspected of communism. These include Hannah Arendt, W.E.B. DuBois, Margaret Mead, Talcott Parsons, and members of the Frankfurt School. Some, like Edith Abbott, were faculty at the University of Chicago. The files were censored and released in accordance with the Freedom of Information Act, and used by Keen to research Stalking the Sociological Imagination: J. Edgar Hoover's FBI Surveillance of American Sociology (1999).
The collection begins with Keen's correspondence, and is organized afterwards by sociologist; members of the Frankfurt School are grouped together. Additional notes and correspondence between Keen and the FBI can be found in individual files. The files themselves cover the 1930s through 1960s, the bulk of them dating from the 1940s and 1950s. Some photocopies are of poor quality and many have substantial redactions. Keen's notes and correspondence date from the 1990s.
The following related resources are located in the Department of Special Collections: