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Lecture on Democracy by Stephen Sawyer: "Toward a Genealogy of the Modern Demos"

The History Department welcomes Stephen W. Sawyer (American University in Paris) to share his work on the histories of modern democracy.

4/21/2025
4:30 pm – 6:00 pm
Room 002, Rockefeller Center
Intended Audience(s): Public
Categories: Lectures & Seminars

"Toward a Genealogy of the Modern Demos: Democratic Society and the Problem of Public Authority in the Nineteenth Century"

Professor Stephen W. Sawyer, Ballantine-Leavitt Professor of History and Director of the Center for Critical Democracy Studies at the American University in Paris, France

 

 

Examining the period between 1800 and 1850, Sawyer studies a set of thinkers who debated at length over the material problems of everyday life, sparking calls for political action and social reform in the face of conflict wreaked by deforestation, urbanization, health crises, labor relations, industrial capitalism, religious tensions, and imperial expansion. By studying this profound transformation in governance we can better understand the origin and meaning of democracy—even when events in our own time have thrown the concept into doubt.

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Monday, April 21, 2025

4:30 PM - 6:00 PM

Rockefeller 002

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Stephen W. Sawyer is the Ballantine-Leavitt Professor of History and Director of the Center for Critical Democracy Studies at the American University in Paris. Sawyer came to AUP from the University of Chicago center in Paris and the Ecole Normale Supérieure-rue d’Ulm. A specialist in political history and theory, Sawyer earned his PhD at the University of Chicago. He is currently at work on a multivolume study of democracy. The first volume of this project was published in 2018 under the title Demos Assembled: Democracy and the International Origins of the Modern State, 1840-1880 (University of Chicago Press) and the second volume Demos Rising Democracy and the Popular Construction of Public Power in France, 1800–1850 (University of Chicago Press) has just appeared.

ttps://ces.fas.harvard.edu/people/stephen-sawyer

https://www.aup.edu/profile/ssawyer

For more information, contact:
History Department, Dartmouth College
history@dartmouth.edu
6036462545
Permanent URL to this event: https://history.dartmouth.edu/events/event?event=76919

Events are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.