James Connolly is also the Director of the Center for Middletown Studies at Ball State University. He serves as a member of the editorial board of the Indiana Magazine of History as well as a manuscript reviewer for the Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era and Rowan and Littlefield Press. Connolly's research focuses on urban and ethnic politics in the 1870-1930 period. He is the author of The Triumph of Ethnic Progressivism: Urban Political Culture in Boston, 1900-1925, as well as several articles and essays. Connolly continues to work on his forthcoming book, "The Idea of the Machine: A Cultural History of Party Politics in Urban-Industrial America," under advance contract with Cornell University Press.