Get involved with the Forum
Participating in the Menard Family George Washington Forum comes with many benefits. We offer fellowships and awards to students. Fellows participate in a rigorous reading group, engage with our guest speakers, and are eligible for research support.
Read along with us!
This year we are discussing philosophical, historical, and economic causes and consequences of the Industrial Revolution and what we can learn and apply to today’s issues. We are reading a wide variety of works including:
The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain 1700-1850 by Prof. Joel Mokyr (visiting us in October!)
Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Liberty’s Dawn: A People’s History of the Industrial Revolution by Prof. Emma Griffin (visiting us in February!)
William Blake: “Jerusalem (And did those feet in ancient time)”; “The Chimney Sweeper: When my mother died I was very young”; “The Chimney Sweeper: A little black thing among the snow”;
William Wordsworth: “The World is Too Much With Us”
Ellen Johnston: Autobiography; “Kennedy’s Dear Mill”; “The Factory Exile”; “Kennedy’s Factory For Ever”; “Address to the Factory of Messrs. J. & W. I. Scott & Co.”
The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen
Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley
Homo Deus by Yuval Harari
English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850-1980 by Martin J. Wiener
Awards
George Washington Forum Undergraduate Fellowship
This award is open to Ohio University undergraduates in all colleges and majors for the 2025-2026 academic year.
Award amount: $2,500Application Deadline is 28 February 2025.Apply
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