Douglas Bradburn

Associate Professor
Ph.D., University of Chicago, 2003
Early American, Early Modern Britain, Comparative Slavery/Emancipation
Office: LT 703
Phone: (607) 777-4424
E-mail: bradburn@binghamton.edu

I specialize in the political history of the American Revolution, with a particular interest in problems related to citizenship, nationalism, state formation, and federalism.  My first book, The Citizenship Revolution:  Politics and the Creation of the American Union, 1774-1804 (Charlottesville, Virginia, 2009) draws out the political settlement of the American Revolution through a history of political fights over the meaning of the new status of “American citizen.”  (A recent profile of my research can be read here.) Other work, published in the William and Mary Quarterly, Atlantic Studies, Historical Reflections and edited collections focuses on the problem of race and ethnicity in the Revolutionary era, political mobilization in the first party system, the limits of American nationalism and the economic history of the late seventeenth century Chesapeake.  Forthcoming projects include the essay volume Early Modern Virginia: Reconsidering the Old Dominion (Virginia, forthcoming), co-edited with John C. Coombs; an extended exploration of the religious motives behind the expansion of England, the impact of War on colonial economic development; an analysis of the long-term origins of the American Revolution; and a reassessment of the origins of American party politics.  Before my current appointment as Associate Professor of History at Binghamton University, State University of New York, I held two year-long post-doctoral fellowships as the Gilder Lehrman Research fellow of the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies at Monticello and as Faculty Fellow at the Newberry Library.  I received BA degrees in History and Economics from the University of Virginia, and a PhD in History from the University of Chicago.

My graduate classes provide an intensive immersion in the significant problems and historiographical trends in early American, early modern, and Atlantic history.   My undergraduate classes introduce students to the rigor of historical method by encouraging the interpretation of primary documents, the production of clear, cogent writing, and the mastery of defining and solving historical problems through research.  I also enjoy teaching the big survey in American history, to introduce the crucial themes and problems that have driven the development of the United States, and provide a necessary foundation for a healthy, open, and fertile mind.  My teaching has recently been recognized by the SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Recent or current undergraduate courses:

• Colonial Rebellion in Early Modern North America
• War and Empire in Early America
• Politics and Society in Colonial America, 1607-1763
• Revolutionary America
• Foundations of America

Recent or current graduate courses:

• Problems in Colonial American History
• Problems in the Era of the American Revolution
• Problems in the Early American Republic

UPSTATE EARLY AMERICAN HISTORY WORKSHOP

Significant Publications Books and Book Manuscripts:

• The Citizenship Revolution: Politics and the Creation of the American Union, 1774-1804. (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2009).
• Early Modern Virginia:  Reconsidering the Old Dominion , editor, with John C. Coombs (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, forthcoming  2011).

Selected articles and book chapters:

• The Eschatological Origins of the English Empire,” in Early Modern Virginia:  New Essays on the Old Dominion, Douglas Bradburn and John C. Coombs editors, (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, University of Virginia Press, 2011).
• "The Problem of Citizenship in the American Revolution," History Compass. 8/9 (2010): 1093-1113
• “A Clamor in the Public Mind: The Opposition to the Alien and Sedition Acts," William and Mary Quarterly, 3rd Series, LXV (July 2008), 565-600.
• "Smoke and Mirrors: Reinterpreting the Society and Economy of the 17th Century Chesapeake," with John C. Coombs, Atlantic Studies, Vol. 3 (October 2006): 131-157.
• "’True Americans’ and ‘Hordes of Foreigners’: Nationalism, Ethnicity, and the Problem of Citizenship in the United States, 1789-1800," Historical Reflections/Reflexions Historiques, Vol. 29 (Spring, 2003): 19-41.
• "Immigrants, Federalists, and the Politics of National Citizenship in the United States, 1789-1800," Working Paper No. 01-07, International Seminar on the History of the Atlantic World, Harvard University, 2001.

Selected Book Reviews:

• Michael A. McDonnell, The Politics of War:  Race, Class, & Conflict in Revolutionary Virginia in The Historical Journal 52 (Sept. 2009), 836-39.
• Peter Mancall, ed., The Atlantic World and Virginia, 1550-1624, in The Journal of Southern History (May 2009).
• Lee Ward, The Politics of Liberty in England and Revolutionary America, H-Atlantic. (.pdf, 299kb)
• C. Edward Skeen, 1816: America Rising, in Journal of the Early Republic, (Fall, 2004).
• Manisha Sinha, The Counterrevolution of Slavery: Politics and Ideology in Antebellum South Carolina, in Journal of the Early Republic, (Winter, 2002).
• Peter S. Onuf, Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood, in The Southern Historian, Vol. XXI, (Tuscaloosa, AL) 2001, 122-125.

Editorial Work:

• Senior Associate Editor, The Southern Historian Tuscaloosa, AL, June 1999-2003.

Recent Awards and Fellowships

• SUNY Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2009-2010
• Fellow, Institute for Humane Society, Washington, D.C. , November 2008
• Virginia Foundation for the Humanities, $5,000 Open Grant for partial funding of Early Modern Virginia:  A Symposium, New Thoughts on the Old Dominion, Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, Charlottesville, VA, August, 17-18, 2007  Total funds raised: $35,000 in cash and kind.
• Gilder Lehrman Junior Research Fellowship, Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies, Monticello, 2004-2005.
• Mellon Fellow, Virginia Historical Society
• Newberry Library Undergraduate Humanities Seminar Faculty Fellowship, 2003-2004.
• CBS Bicentennial Narrators Scholarship, Division of Humanities, University of Chicago, 2002-2003.
• Von Holst Prize Lectureship University of Chicago, 2001-2002.
• Summer Pre-Dissertation Research Grant, University of Chicago History Department, 1998.
• University of Chicago Graduate Studies Fellowship, 1995-1999.
• Raven Society Research Fellowship, University of Virginia, 1994-1995.
• Anne Hope Van Schaack Award for Jefferson Studies, University of Virginia, for paper “‘Farming is But Gambling’: Thomas Jefferson’s Plantations in Retirement,” 1994.