Gordon S. Wood

Gordon S. Wood

Gordon Stewart Wood (born November 27, 1933 in Concord , Massachusetts ) is an American historian . It deals with the history of the American Revolution .

Life

Wood graduated from Tufts University with a bachelor's degree summa cum laude in 1955 and, interrupted from military service as a lieutenant in the US Air Force from 1955 to 1958 in Japan, at Harvard University , where he received his master’s degree (AM) in 1959 and received his doctorate in 1964 with Bernard Bailyn . He taught at Harvard ( Teaching Fellow 1960 to 1964, Assistant Professor 1966/67), from 1964 to 1966 as a professor at the College of William & Mary (Fellow of the Institute of Early American History and Culture ), at the University of Michigan ( Associate Professor from 1967 to 1969) and from 1969 as associate professor and from 1971 as professor at Brown University . From 1983 to 1986 he was head of the Faculty of History, from 1990 University Professor and from 1997 Ava O. Way University Professor . He is now Professor Emeritus there.

He was visiting professor at the University of Cambridge (Pitt Professor 1982/83), in 1991 at All Souls College , Oxford and at the School of Law at Northwestern University .

Wood is highly regarded in the USA as a historian of the American Revolution and also found his way into popular culture - for example, he is quoted in the film Good Will Hunting in an academic debate between students. Unlike previous historians, he did not focus on the period before 1776 or the presidency of Andrew Jackson (from 1829), but the time in between. Based on thorough source studies, he presented his view in 1969 in his book Creation of the American Republic . After Wood, a completely new form of politics and government with completely new ideas of representation, protection of civil rights and the separation of powers emerged. According to Wood, it was not the work of a narrow elite, but of broad citizen participation and discussion, documented in pamphlets and newspapers. In addition, it was designed to be open to change from the start. While his first book focused on the period from 1776 to 1787, he continued the investigation into Radicalism of the American Revolution until about 1825 and emphasized not only the political aspects but also the revolutionary changes in social relationships among each other during this time after Wood.

He writes for the New York Review of Books and The Republic, among others.

In 2011 he received the Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Award . For his book Creation of the American Republic he received the Bancroft Prize in 1970 (as well as a nomination for the National Book Award and the John H. Dunning Prize in 1970) and for Radicalism of the American Revolution in 1993 the Pulitzer Prize for History. In 2010 he received the National Humanities Medal . In 1980/81 he was a Guggenheim Fellow . He holds an honorary doctorate from La Trobe University in Melbourne (2001). In 1988 he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 1994 to the American Philosophical Society .

Fonts

Books:

• The Creation of the American Republic , University of North Carolina Press 1969
• Editor: Representation in the American Revolution , University of Virginia Press, 1969
• Published by: The Rising Glory of America, 1760–1820 , New York: George Braziller 1971, 2nd edition, Boston: Northeastern University Press 1990
• Editor: The Confederation and the Constitution , Boston: Little, Brown 1973.
• Revolution and the Political Integration of the Enslaved and Disenfranchised , American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, Washington, DC 1974.
• with JR Pole: Social Radicalism and the Idea of ​​Equality in the American Revolution , University of St. Thomas, Houston 1976
• with others: The Great Republic , Boston: Little, Brown 1977, 4th edition DC Heath 1992
• The Making of the Constitution , Waco: Baylor University Press, 1987
• Published in: Rising Glory of America , 1760-1820, Northeastern University Press 1990.
• The Radicalism of the American Revolution , Alfred A. Knopf 1992.
• Editor with Louise G. Wood: Russian-American Dialogue on the American Revolution , University of Missouri Press, 1995
• Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787 , University of North Carolina Press 1998.
• Editor with Anthony Molho: Imagined Histories: American Historians Interpret the Past , Princeton University Press 1998.
• Monarchism and Republicanism in the Early United States , La Trobe University, Melbourne 2000
• The American Revolution: A History , New York: Modern Library 2001.
• The Americanization of Benjamin Franklin , Penguin Press 2004.
• Revolutionary Characters: What Made the Founders Different , Penguin Press 2006.
• The Purpose of the Past: Reflections on the Uses of History , Penguin Press 2008.
• Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789-1815 , Oxford University Press 2010 (in the Oxford History of the United States series).
• The Idea of ​​America. Reflections on the Birth of the United States . Penguin Press 2011 (essay collection)

Some essays:

• Rhetoric and Reality in the American Revolution , The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 23, No. 1, 1966, pp. 3-32, reprinted in Wood The Idea of ​​America
• Conspiracy and the Paranoid Style: Causality and Deceit in the Eighteenth Century , The William and Mary Quarterly, Vol. 39, No. 3, 1982
• Interests and Disinterestedness in the Making of the Constitution , in Richard Beeman, Stephen Botein, Edward C. Carter II. (Editor) Beyond Confederation. The Origins of the Constitution and American National Identity , University of North Carolina Press 1987, 69-109 (also in Wood The Idea of ​​America )

Web links

• Curriculum Vitae, pdf

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Presentation of his work and influence after David Hackett Fischer Gordon S. Wood, Historian of the American Revolution , New York Times, Sunday Book Review, July 22, 2011, Review by Gordon S. Wood The Idea of ​​America , Online
2. ^ Member History: Gordon S. Wood. American Philosophical Society, accessed January 1, 2019 (with biographical notes).