Joanne B. Freeman
Joanne B. Freeman, a leading scholar of revolutionary and early national American history and political culture, and the life and times of Alexander Hamilton, was recently appointed the Alan Boles, Class of 1929 Professor of History, effective immediately.
Freeman, who has been a member of Yale’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences (FAS) since 1997, has a joint appointment in American Studies.
Freeman’s pathbreaking first book, “Affairs of Honor: National Politics in the New Republic” (Yale University Press) — a study of the grammar of political combat in the first decade of national government — won the Best Book award from the Society of Historians of the Early American Republic. She edited “The Essential Hamilton” (Library of America) and “Alexander Hamilton: Writings” (Library of America), the latter of which was named one of the Atlantic Monthly’s “best books” of 2001, and co-edited “Jeffersonian Republicans in Power, 1800-1824” (University Press of Virginia) with Johann Neem.
Her most recent book, “The Field of Blood: Violence in Congress and the Road to Civil War” (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux) — which was a New York Times Notable Book for 2018, a finalist for the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize, and a best book of the year for National Public Radio, the Smithsonian, and Mother Jones — uncovered more than 70 physically violent incidents in the halls of Congress, exploring the emotional logic of disunion in politics, the press, and the U.S. Congress before the Civil War.
Freeman’s scholarship has been widely published in leading academic journals including William and Mary Quarterly, Journal of the Early Republic, Journal of Policy History, and Yale Law Journal, among others. She has written op-ed pieces for the New York Times, The Atlantic, Politico, and a host of other publications. Her scholarship has informed all three branches of government: she has contributed to amicus briefs for the Supreme Court, been a panelist on Congressional briefings on gerrymandering and political violence, and lectured to and consulted with groups in both the House and Senate. She was one of a small group of historians called to the White House by President Biden in March of 2021 to discuss historical precedents for the challenges that he faced on taking office.
Long committed to public-minded history, Freeman has been a historical advisor for museums, documentary filmmakers, and historic sites; she worked as a historical consultant for the National Park Service in the reconstruction of the Alexander Hamilton Grange National Memorial. More recently, Lin-Manuel Miranda consulted her and used her work in writing “Hamilton: An American Musical.” She currently hosts “History Matters (…and so does coffee!),” a weekly podcast that uses history to decode the present; in the past, she co-hosted the “BackStory” podcast from Virginia Humanities, and Vox’s “Now and Then” with Heather Cox Richardson. She appears frequently on podcasts and media outlets such as MSNBC, NPR, CNN, and the BBC, commenting about American history, political violence, the history of Congress, the Founders and Framers, and the workings (and failings) of American democracy, and has appeared in many documentaries on PBS and the History Channel.
Freeman teaches graduate reading and research courses in early national American history and political history, and undergraduate seminars on early national politics and political culture, as well as lecture courses on the American Revolution and early national America. She is also a dedicated department and university citizen, who has served on many committees for faculty searches and promotions, and graduate admissions, and is on the board for The Papers of Benjamin Franklin. In 2017, she received the William Clyde DeVane Teaching Award; the following year, she won the Sidonie Miskimin Clauss Prize for Teaching Excellence in the Humanities. Her online Open Yale Courses course, “The American Revolution,” has been viewed by hundreds of thousands of people around the world. She has been an invited speaker at numerous class reunions, university functions, and alumni events.
A graduate of Pomona College with a B.A. in English Literature, Freeman earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in History from the University of Virginia, focusing on early national American politics and political culture.
Elected a fellow of the Society of American Historians in 2010 and named one of the nation’s “Top Young Historians” by the History News Network in 2005, Freeman has won fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers, the Dirkson Congressional Research Center, the American Historical Association, and the Library of Congress, among others. In 2022, she was given the William Hickling Prescott Award for Excellence in Historical Writing by the Massachusetts Historical Society (along with Heather Cox Richardson), and the Paul Gagnon Prize for Scholarship and the Promotion of History Education by the National Council for History Education.
Freeman is a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians and was President of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic from 2021-22.
