Professor of History and American Studies
The American Founding, founding fathers, early American politics and elections, political violence, 18th & 19th centuries, duels, the culture of Congress before the Civil War, Alexander Hamilton
I work on the culture of politics in the 18th and 19th centuries: how politics worked on a ground level; how elite politicians fought political battles; how they fought each other (with guns and knives, as well as otherwise); how they improvised the national government into being in the 1790s; how they tried to hold that government together in the 1840s and 1850s; how they contributed to the coming of the Civil War. Political violence is a major component of my work.
The language we use to describe history matters, explains Yale’s Joanne Freeman
PBS
‘I see reason to fear — and hope’: Joanne Freeman explores what history can teach us about the present moment
The Atlantic
Yale’s Joanne Freeman on political violence in the U.S.: We’ve had these moments before
MSNBC