After having taught at Williams College, Yale University, and California Institute of Technology, Cushing Strout joined the faculty at Cornell in 1962 as a Visiting Professor. From 1975-1989 he held the Ernest I. White Chair of American Studies and Humane Letters. He has written numerous scholarly essays and books on American intellectual and literary history, including The Pragmatic Revolt in American History: Carl L. Becker and Charles A. Beard (University Press, 1958), a pioneering study on Becker and Beard's economic readings of Constitutional History.