How have poets and poetry—from John Milton to Mercy Otis Warren and Phillis Wheatley—influenced the Constitution and America’s core democratic principles? Join Vincent Carretta, editor of the Penguin Classics editions of the Complete Writings of Phillis Wheatley and professor emeritus of English at the University of Maryland, Eileen M. Hunt, full professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame, and Eric Slauter, associate professor and director of the Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture at the University of Chicago, for a discussion exploring the ways poetry has intersected with the Constitution and constitutional ideas throughout American history. Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, moderates.
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Vincent Carretta is professor emeritus of English at the University of Maryland. In addition to more than 100 articles and reviews on a range of 18th-century subjects, he is the author of Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage, among many other books. He is also the editor of the Penguin Classics edition of Phillis Wheatley, Complete Writings and the Oxford University Press edition of The Writings of Phillis Wheatley, which received recognition from the Modern Language Association.
Eileen M. Hunt is full professor of political science at the University of Notre Dame where she also holds fellowships at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies and Nanovic Institute for European Studies. She is the author of several books on political philosophy, including her newest book, Artificial Life After Frankenstein, as well as several scholarly articles on American female poets such as Hannah Mather Crocker and Mercy Otis Warren. She is also a fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society.
Eric Slauter is associate professor of English and director of the Karla Scherer Center for the Study of American Culture at the University of Chicago. He is the author of The State as a Work of Art: The Cultural Origins of the Constitution and has published essays on early American culture and politics, book history, and on Atlantic history in leading journals.
Jeffrey Rosen is the president and CEO of the National Constitution Center, a nonpartisan nonprofit organization devoted to educating the public about the U.S. Constitution. Rosen is also professor of law at The George Washington University Law School and a contributing editor of The Atlantic.
Additional Resources
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Eric Slauter, The State as a Work of Art: The Cultural Origins of the Constitution
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Hannah Mather Crocker, Reminiscences & Traditions of Boston, ed. Eileen M. Hunt and Sarah Houser
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Vincent Carretta, Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage
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Mercy Otis Warren, "Political Reverie," in Poems, Dramatic and Miscellaneous
Transcript
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