After receiving his doctorate in History from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1968, Nissenbaum began his academic career at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, where he was on the faculty until he retired in 2004.[3]
He was a fellow twice at Harvard's Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History. The first time, in 1976-1977, was to work on two projects, one about the career of Nathaniel Hawthorne and the other to write the introduction to the Salem Witchcraft Papers with Paul Boyer. He returned in 1994-1995 to work on his book, The Battle for Christmas.[4]
At the American Antiquarian Society, he was a Daniels Fellow in 1978-1979, supervising innovative research projects by Five College undergraduate students, one of which culminated in an exhibition of book illustrations by F. O. C. Darley at the AAS. He also designed and conducted a 5-week evening course for adults, "Victorian America," through the Worcester Public School system.[5]
He received a fellowship in 1984 from the American Council of Learned Societies to work on the subject of "Nathaniel Hawthorne and the literary marketplace".[6]
He served on the board of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, a fund for underwriting public projects in the humanities, from 1985-1992, and was the Chairman of the Foundation from 1987-1989.[7][8]
From 1989-1990, he was the James Pinckney Harrison Professor of History at the College of William and Mary.[9]
In 1991-1992, he was granted an American Antiquarian Society-National Endowment for the Humanities Long-Term Fellowship [10] to pursue research on the history of Christmas in New England in relation to popular culture and the printed word.[11]
He was a Visiting Fulbright Professor at the Humboldt University of Berlin from 1998-1999. In this capacity, he gave a lecture, "Sexual Prudery and Radicalism in the Nineteenth-Century America," on March 31, 1999, for the American Literature Department at Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland,[12] and the W. E. B. Du Bois Lecture, "The 'Christmas Riots' of 1865. Black Hopes and White Fears on the Eve of Reconstruction," at Humboldt on April 27, 1999.[13]
He was granted a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities in 1999, in support of his research into myth-making of old New England.[14]
After retiring from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 2004, Nissenbaum taught HST295, a special topic seminar, "American Holidays", as an adjunct at the University of Vermont in the Fall of 2007.[15]
