George Washington Forum News and Events

Democratic nations have seldom been created in times of peace, and the United States was no exception. This conference examines the interplay between violence and the political, intellectual, social, and cultural histories of British North America and the United States during the last three-quarters of the eighteenth century. Plenary speakers include Andrew Cayton (Miami University), Patrick Griffin (University of Notre Dame), David Hendrickson (Colorado College) and Peter Onuf (University of Virginia).

Paul D. Halliday (University of Virginia)

Paul D. Halliday is Professor of History at the University of Virginia. The recipient of grants from both the National Endowment for the Humanities and the American Council of Learned Societies, he is the author of two books, Dismembering the Body Politic: Partisan Politics in England’s Towns, 1650-1730 (1998) and Habeas Corpus: From England to Empire (2010). He won the prestigious Inner Temple Book Prize in 2011 for his work on habeas corpus.

Jack P. Greene (The Johns Hopkins University)

Jack P. Greene is the Andrew W. Mellon Professor Emeritus in the Humanities at The Johns Hopkins University. An authority on early American and Atlantic history, Greene has held fellowship from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, the National Humanities Center, and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, among others. Greene retired in 2005 and is currently an Invited Research Scholar at the John Carter Brown Library. He is the author, most recently, of The Constitutional Origins of the American Revolution (2010).

Patrick J. Deneen (Georgetown University)

Patrick J. Deneen is Associate Professor of Government at Georgetown University and holds the Markos and Eleni Tsakopoulos-Kounalakis Chair in Hellenic Studies. His interests include ancient political thought, American political thought, democratic theory, religion and politics, and literature and politics. He is the author of The Odyssey of Political Theory (2000) and Democratic Faith (2005), as well as co-editor of a book entitled “Democracy’s Literature” (2005). He is also co-editor of two collections of essays by Wilson Carey McWilliams, entitled Redeeming Democracy in America (2011) and The Democratic Soul (2011).