The Harmsworth Visiting Professor of American History

2023-24: Prof Elizabeth R. Varon (Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History, University of Virginia).

2022-23: Prof Bruce Schulman (William E. Huntington Professor of History, Boston University).

2021-22 Prof Patrick Griffin (Madden-Hennebry Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame).

MT 2019, HT 2020, TT 2021 Peter Mancall, University of Southern California
The Origins of the American Economy.

2018-19 Barbara Savage, University of Pennsylvania
War, Race, and Anti-Imperialism in Merze Tate’s International Thought

2017-18 Elliott West, University of Arkansas
Things Come Together: Science and the American West

2016-17 Alan Taylor, University of Virginia
American Revolutions: Empires and Republics in North America, 1750-1804

2015-16 Kristin Hoganson, University of Illinois
Isolationism as an Urban Legend

2014-15 Annette Gordon-Reed, Harvard University
Constituting ‘the People’: Law’s Empire and the American Imagination

2013-14 Richard J. M. Blackett, Vanderbilt University
The Underground Railroad and the Struggle Against Slavery

2012-13 Gary Gerstle
Paradoxes of State Power in America

2011-12 Philip Morgan, The Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore
A Tale of Two Hamiltons: North American-Caribbean Crossings

2010-11 Ian Tyrrell, University of New South Wales
Crisis of the Wasteful Nation: A Tale of Theodore Roosevelt and Environmental Alarmism in the Progressive Era

2009-10 Robin Kelley, University of Southern California
He’s got the Whole World in His Hands: U.S. History and its Discontents in the Obama Era

2008-09 Peter S Onuf, University of Virginia
Thomas Jefferson and the Origins of American Democracy

2007-08 Lizabeth Cohen, Harvard University
Salvaging the American City in the Age of Mass Suburbanization

2006-07 Linda K Kerber, University of Iowa
The Stateless as the Citizen’s Other: A View from U.S. History

2005-06 Kathryn Kish Sklar, State University of New York, Binghamton
The Centrality of Feminism in American Political History, 1776-2000

2004-05 Joel H Silbey, Cornell University
The Party of Lincoln: Abraham Lincoln and the Emergence of the Republican Party before the Civil War

2003-04 Richard R Beeman, University of Pennsylvania
The Uncertain History of Democracy: A View from the Eighteenth Century (with some Concluding Speculations on the Twenty-First)

2002-03 Melvyn P Leffler, University of Virginia
9/11 and the Past and Future of American Foreign Policy

2001-02 David A Hollinger, University of California (Berkeley)
The Question of Ethno-racial Mixture in American History

2000-01 Timothy Hall Breen, Northwestern University
The Lockean Moment: The Language of Human Rights on the Eve of the American Revolution

1999-2000 Robin William Winks, Yale University
To Stimulate to Some Action: The Harmsworth Professorship 1920-2000

1998-99 Alan Brinkley, Columbia University
Imagining the Twentieth Century: Perspectives from Two Fins-de-Siècle

1997-98 Ernest Richard May, Harvard University
Shaping Forces in American Foreign Policy

1996-97 Robert Lawrence Middlekauff, University of California (Berkeley)
Democracy in America before Tocqueville

1995-96 David M Kennedy, Stanford University
Can the United States still afford to be a nation of immigrants?

1994-95 Robert Dallek, University of California, Los Angeles
Franklin D. Roosevelt as World Leader: Fifty Years After

1993-94 Eric Foner, Columbia University
Slavery and Freedom in Nineteenth-Century America

1992-93 John Lewis Gaddis, Ohio University
On Contemporary History

1991-92 James Aloysius Henretta, University of Maryland
Charles Evans Hughes and the Strange Death of Liberal America

1990-91 Joyce Oldham Appleby, University of California, Los Angeles
Without Resolution: the Jeffersonian Tension in American Nationalism

1989-90 Daniel Walker Howe, University of California, Los Angeles
Henry David Thoreau on the duty of civil disobedience

1988-89 George M Fredrickson, Stanford University
Black-white relations since emancipation: The search for a comparative perspective

1987-88 Richard Slator Dunn, University of Pennsylvania
An Odd Couple: John Winthrop of Massachusetts and William Penn of Pennsylvania

1986-87 David Montgomery, Yale University
The American Civil War and the meanings of ‘freedom’

1985-86 David Hackett Fischer, Brandeis University

1984-85 Joseph Morgan Kousser, California Institute of Technology
Dead End: The Development of Litigation on Racial Discrimination in Schools in 19th Century America

1983-84 John Willard Shy, University of Michigan
Two Kinds of History: Beard, Bailyn, and the Origins of the United States

1982-83 Samuel Pfrimmer Hays, University of Pittsburgh

1981-82 James Tyler Patterson, Brown University
Wealth and Poverty in Modern America: the 1960’s and 1970’s

1980-81 Morton Keller, Brandeis University
The Historical Sources of Urban Personality: Boston, New York, Philadelphia

1979-80 Eric Louis McKitrick, Columbia University
England and America in the 1790’s: A Critical Interlude

1978-79 Norman A Graebner, University of Virginia

1977-78 Wille Lee Rose,The Johns Hopkins University

1976-77 John Morton Blum, Yale University

1975-76 Jack P Greene, The Johns Hopkins University

1974-75 Richard C Wade, City University of New York

1973-74 Carl Neumann Degler, Stanford University

1972-73 Oscar Handlin, Harvard University

1971-72 William Edward Leuchtenburg, Columbia University

1970-71 Charles Grier Sellers, University of California (Berkeley)

1969-70 David Brion Davis, Cornell University

1968-69 Fletcher Melvin Green, University of North Carolina

1967-68 Don Edward Fehrenbacher, Stanford University

1966-67 Thomas Harry Williams, Louisiana State University

1965-66 Bell Irvin Wiley, Emory University

1964-65 Allan Nevins, Huntington Library

1963-64 Frank Everson Vandiver, Rice University

1962-63 Richard Nelson Current, University of Wisconsin

1961-62 Kenneth Milton Stampp, University of California (Berkeley)

1960-61 George Edwin Mowry, University of California (Los Angeles)

1959-60 David Herbert Donald, Columbia University

1958-59 Arthur Stanley Link, Northwestern University

1957-58 Walter T Johnson, University of Chicago

1956-57 Arthur E Bestor, Jr, University of Illinois

1955-56 Frank Burt Freidel, Jr, Harvard University

1954-55 Comer Vann Woodward, The Johns Hopkins University

1953-54 Ray Allen Billington, Northwestern University

1952-53 Henry Steele Commager, Columbia University

1951-52 Lawrence Henry Gipson, Lehigh University

1950-51 Charles Sackett Sydnor, Duke University

1949-50 Merrill Jensen, University of Wisconsin

1948-49 Louis M Hacker, Columbia University

1947-48 David Morris Potter, Yale University

1946-47 Walt Whitman Rostow, University of Texas

1945-46 Vacant

1944-45 Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, Princeton University

1943-44 Vacant

1942-43 Walter Prescott Webb, University of Texas

1941-42 Vacant

1940-41 Allan Nevins, Columbia University

1939-40 Thomas Jefferson Wertenbaker, Princeton University

1925-39 Robert McNutt McElroy, Princeton University

1922-25 Samuel Eliot Morison, Harvard University