Personal information

Biography

My interests concern the history of ideas in the modern era, especially Marxism and its concomitant labor history. I am currently pursuing research abroad for my dissertation, tentatively entitled, Pursuing Contradiction: Dialectics of German Social Democratic Marxism, 1890–1914. Against enduring myths of the vulgar, economic determinism of early Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD) theory, I recover how pre-war party intellectuals endeavored to convert the ideas of the late Karl Marx into a complex body of actionable theory for mass politics. Previous scholarship has overlooked the centrality of their Marxian-Hegelian concept of capitalist dialectics—a historically specific self-contradictory totality—which informed their attempts to devise a concrete, long-term, multistep political strategy based on exacerbating class conflict.

As a graduate student at BC, I have written two research papers for publication. The first addresses America’s first Socialist congressman, Victor Berger, and aims to recover the lost history of early twentieth-century American socialism from the obscuring lenses of Progressivism, Populism, anarchism, scientism, official Communism, and American Exceptionalism. The second contextualizes Joachim Bruhn and the little-studied Antideutsche (“Anti-German”) movement of the 1990s, particularly in terms of their intellectual inheritance and divergence from the Frankfurt School’s critique of “state capitalism” from the 1930s and 1940s.

I have been a Graduate Fellow at the Clough Center for Constitutional Democracy for the 2020–2021, 2021–2022, and 2024–2025 academic years. In addition to my scholarly work, I serve as a member of the Platypus Affiliated Society, an international educational organization on the history of the left. On campus, I lead reading groups and public fora as the founding president of Platypus BC. My writings on politics, history, and the left have appeared in Weekly Worker, Sublation Magazine, and Platypus Review.

Activities

Employment (4)

Boston College: Boston, Massachusetts, US

2019-08-26 to present | T.A. / Research Assistant (History)
Employment
Source: Self-asserted source
Will Stratford

JET Program: Isesaki, Gunma, JP

2018-08-01 to 2019-08-01 | Assistant Language Teacher (Isesaki Board of Education)
Employment
Source: Self-asserted source
Will Stratford

University of Chicago Library : Chicago, IL, US

2016-09-01 to 2018-08-01 | Circulation/Reserves Assistant (Circulation/Reserves)
Employment
Source: Self-asserted source
Will Stratford

Match Education : Chicago, Illinois, US

2013-08-01 to 2014-06-01 | Math Tutor (UChicago Urban Education Lab)
Employment
Source: Self-asserted source
Will Stratford

Education and qualifications (3)

Boston College: Boston, Massachusetts, US

2019-08-26 to present | Ph.D. (History)
Education
Source: Self-asserted source
Will Stratford

Davidson College: Davidson, NC, US

2009-08-26 to 2013-05-12 | B.A., Cum Laude (English Literature and Philosophy )
Education
Source: Self-asserted source
Will Stratford

SIT Study Abroad : Kathmandu, Bagmati Pradesh, NP

2011-09-01 to 2011-12-08 (Nepal: Tibetan and Himalayan Peoples)
Education
Source: Self-asserted source
Will Stratford

Professional activities (4)

Platypus Boston College: Boston, MA, US

2019-09-01 to present | President (Graduate School of Arts & Sciences)
Service
Source: Self-asserted source
Will Stratford

Platypus Affiliated Society: Chicago, Illinois, US

2018-04-01 to present | Member, Boston Chapter Head
Membership
Source: Self-asserted source
Will Stratford

Platypus Review: Chicago, Illinois, US

2018-07-01 to 2019-07-01 | Copy Editor
Service
Source: Self-asserted source
Will Stratford

Doc Films: Chicago, Illinois, US

2015-07-01 to 2016-07-01 | Projectionist
Service
Source: Self-asserted source
Will Stratford

Funding (3)

Clough Center Fellow

2020-07 to 2026-07 | Award
Clough Center for the Study of Constitutional Democracy (Boston, MA, US)
Source: Self-asserted source
Will Stratford

Doctoral Fellow

2019-08 to 2025-05 | Salary award
Robert J. Morrissey College of Arts and Sciences, Boston College (Chestnut Hill, MA, US)
Source: Self-asserted source
Will Stratford

Brian Scholar Semifinalist Annual Financial Scholarship

2009-08 to 2013-05 | Grant
Davidson College (Davidson, NC, US)
Source: Self-asserted source
Will Stratford