Stanford University Professor Caroline Winterer explores how the American founders drew inspiration from not only classical Greece and Rome, but other civilizations in the ancient world, including Carthage, Rome’s mortal enemy. In celebration of America’s 250th anniversary, the conversation explores how the founders looked much more broadly in the ancient world for inspiration during the American Revolution and how these ideas have shaped our constitutional democracy. Thomas Donnelly, lead scholar at the National Constitution Center, moderates.
This program was presented in partnership with the University of Pennsylvania Department of Classical Studies. It was the first in a three-part lecture series featuring Caroline Winterer titled “American Antiquities: Beyond the Classical World of the American Founders.” Information on the additional two lectures can be found here.
Video
Participants
Caroline Winterer is the William Robertson Coe Professor of History and American Studies, and rofessor by courtesy of Classics. She specializes in American history before 1900, especially the history of ideas and the history of science. She is the author of five books. Most recently, How the New World Became Old: The Deep Time Revolution in America (Princeton, 2024), shows how the idea of deep time transformed how Americans see their country and themselves.
Thomas Donnelly is lead scholar at the National Constitution Center and a law professor at the University of Richmond. Prior to joining the Center in 2016, he served as counsel at the Constitutional Accountability Center, as a Climenko Fellow and lecturer on law at Harvard Law School, and as a law clerk for Judge Thomas Ambro on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit.
Additional Resources
- National Constitution Center Town Hall, December 3, 2020
- Caroline Winterer, American Enlightenments: Pursuing Happiness in the Age of Reason (2016)
- Caroline Winterer, The Mirror of Antiquity: American Women and the Classical Tradition, 1750–1900 (2007)
- Caroline Winterer, The Culture of Classicism: Ancient Greece and Rome in American Intellectual Life, 1780-1910 (2004)
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