T. H. Breen

T. H. Breen is the founding Director of the Nicholas D. Chabraja Center for Historical Studies and William Smith Mason Professor of American History (Emeritus) at Northwestern University. He now holds a James March Professorship at large at the University of Vermont. He received his Ph.D. from Yale University in 1968 and honorary degree from Oxford University. Breen’s major books include The Character of the Good Ruler: A Study of Puritan Political Ideas in New England (1974); Puritans and Adventurers: Change and Persistence in Early America (1980); Tobacco Culture: The Mentality of the Great Tidewater Planters on the Eve of Revolution (1985); Marketplace of Revolution (2004); American Insurgents-American Patriots: the Revolution of the People (2010); George Washington's Journey (2017); and, with Stephen Innes of the University of Virginia, “Myne Owne Ground”: Race and Freedom on Virginia’s Eastern Shore (1980). His Imagining the Past (1989) won the 1990 Historic Preservation Book Award; George Washington's Journey was awarded the George Washington Memorial Book Prize (2018). In addition to receiving several prizes for outstanding teaching at Northwestern, Breen has been the recipient of research grants from the American Council of Learned Societies, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Institute for Advanced Study (Princeton), the National Humanities Center, and the Huntington Library. He has served as the Fowler Hamilton Fellow at Christ Church, Oxford University (1987–1988), the Pitt Professor of American History and Institutions, Cambridge University (1990–1991), the Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University (2000–2001), the Kluge Professorship in American Law and Governance at the Library of Congress (2017), and an Honorary Fellowship at the Historisches Kolleg (Munich). He was a recipient of the Humboldt Prize (Germany). He is now completing Revolutionary Passions and Constraints: The American Experience for Harvard University Press.