Gary R. Hess Lecture in Policy History with Dr. Alan Taylor

About

Please join the Department of History as we welcome distinguished historian Dr. Alan Taylor, who will present the Gary R. Hess Lecture in Policy History. His lecture is titled "Completing the Revolution: Western Expansion, Foreign Entanglements and Internal Conflicts, 1783-1796." The end of the War of the American Revolution provided the new United States with a vast western territory that was potentially either a windfall or a curse. To gain full control, the new nation felt driven to suppress Native nations and fend off their British and Spanish allies. During the 1780s, that struggle produced a crisis that nearly blew apart the tenuous union of the states and led to the push for a new constitution meant to endow the nation with the means to control and develop the West.

Alan Taylor is a distinguished American historian who earned his Ph.D. from Brandeis University (1986) and has held prestigious professorships at Boston University, UC Davis, the University of Virginia (Thomas Jefferson Foundation Chair), and Oxford University (Harmsworth Professor). He has authored twelve books on early American history, including William Cooper's Town: Power and Persuasion on the Frontier of the Early Republic (1995) and The Internal Enemy: Slavery and War in Virginia (2013), both of which won Pulitzer Prizes, and his 2021 work American Republics: A Continental History of the United States, 1783-1850 received the Barbara and David Zalaznick Book Prize.

His scholarship focuses on the Revolutionary era, frontier settlements, slavery, and the Civil War period. His latest book, released in September 2026, Tower Hill: A Plantation on the Edge of Rebellion, examines the context of Nat Turner's 1831 rebellion. Beyond his prolific research, Taylor has been deeply committed to education, advising California's K-12 history teachers for twelve years and earning multiple teaching awards. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, and has contributed to major public history projects, including serving as an advisor for Ken Burns's PBS documentary "The American Revolution," which began airing in the fall of 2025.

The Gary R. Hess Lecture in Policy History is an annual distinguished lecture initiated by Dr. Hess's former students to honor his 45 years of teaching, scholarship and service to BGSU. This lecture is presented by the Department of History.