Peter onuf biography

American historian and professor

Peter S. Onuf (born 1946) is an American historian and professor known for his work on U.S. PresidentThomas Jefferson and Federalism. In 1989, he was named the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of the University of Virginia, a chair he held until retiring in 2012.^[1] The chair's previous occupants included Jefferson biographers Dumas Malone and Merrill D. Peterson; he was succeeded by Alan Taylor.^[2]

Life

A native New Englander, Onuf graduated from Johns Hopkins University, where he worked with eminent early American historian Jack P. Greene. He taught at Columbia University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Southern Methodist University. In 2008, he held the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History chair at the University of Oxford.^[3]

Onuf also acted as a cohost for the radio show BackStory with the American History Guys.^[4] In 2014, he taught a free online University of Virginia course on Thomas Jefferson.^[5]

Publications

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seminar

Peter S. Onuf is the Thomas Jefferson Foundation Professor Emeritus in the Corcoran Department of History at the University of Virginia and a Senior Research Fellow at the Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies in Monticello.  A specialist in the history of the early American republic, Onuf was educated at Johns Hopkins University, where he received his A.B. in 1967 and Ph.D. in 1973, and has taught at Columbia University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Southern Methodist University before coming to Virginia in 1990.  In 2008-2009 Onuf was Harmsworth Professor of American History at the University of Oxford. In 2014, he was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  Onuf’s work on Thomas Jefferson’s political thought, culminating in Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood and The Mind of Thomas Jefferson, grows out of earlier studies on the history of American federalism, foreign policy, and political economy.  He and co-author Annette Gordon-Reed have recently published Most Blessed of Patriarchs: Thomas Jeff

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Peter S. Onuf

Born:6-Oct-1946
Birthplace:New Haven, CT


Gender: Male
Race or Ethnicity: White
Occupation:Historian

Nationality: United States
Executive summary:Jefferson's Empire

    University: AB, Johns Hopkins University (1967)
    University: PhD, Johns Hopkins University (1973)
    Professor: History, Southern Methodist University
    Professor: History, University of Virginia


Author of books:
The Origins of the Federal Republic: Jurisdictional Controversies in the United States, 1775-1787 (, law)
Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance (, history)
The Midwest and the Nation: Rethinking the History of an American Region (, history)
A Union of Interests: Political and Economic Thought in Revolutionary America (, politics)
Federal Union, Modern World: The Law of Nations in an Age of Revolutions, 1776-1814 (, law)
Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (, biography)
Jeffersonian America (, history)
Nations, Markets, and War: Modern History and the American Civil War