Faculty and Staff

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African-American Studies

Claire Rydell Arcenas

Associate Professor of History

Contact

Office: LA 261
Email: claire.arcenas@umontana.edu
Office Hours: I am on sabbatical for AY 2024-2025.

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Personal Summary

Claire Arcenas is an American historian and an award-winning author and teacher. She specializes in the history of American thought across the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. Her first book, (University of Chicago Press, 2022), explored the influence of the seventeenth-century English philosopher John Locke on American thought and culture over the last three hundred years. It received the 2022 István Hont Book Prize. She is currently writing a book about the Declaration of Independence, American Democracy, and Civic Education in the United States, 1776-2026.

Professor Arcenas is the recipient of numerous research fellowships and grants, including individual awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities (2019-2020) and the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation (2018-2019). In 2023, she was honored to receive the Helen and Winston Cox Educational Excellence Award in recognition of her commitment to teaching and mentoring students at the �ϻ�� (�ϻ��).

At �ϻ��, Professor Arcenas teaches courses on a range of topics in North American and United States history and historical methodology at both the undergraduate and graduate level. She also advises MA and PhD students whose projects explore topics related to American intellectual history across a broad chronology. She is currently accepting graduate students. If you are interested in graduate studies in History at �ϻ��, please contact her via e-mail.

Education

PhD, Stanford University, 2016

MA, Stanford University, 2013

BA, University of Wisconsin, 2010

Courses Taught

HSTA 101 American History I

HSTA 103 Honors American History I

HSTR 200 Introduction to Historical Methods

HSTA 275 Making History Public

HSTA 307Y American Revolution and Founding Era

HSTA 325 Digital Worlds of Early America - Intermediate Writing Course

HSTA 373 The History of American Thought to 1865 - Intermediate Writing Course

HSTA 427 Freedom, Slavery, Equality - Advanced Writing Course

HSTA 501 Graduate Readings in Early American History

HSTA 575 Graduate Seminar in Public History

Field of Study

American History; Intellectual History; History of Political Thought and Politics; History of Education; History of the Atlantic World; Historiography; Digital Humanities.

Selected Publications

Claire Rydell Arcenas, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022).

Winner of the István Hont Book Prize for the best book published in intellectual history in 2022.
To learn more about America's Philosopher, you can , , or read reviews , , and .

Publications

Claire Rydell Arcenas, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2022).

Claire Rydell Arcenas, “On the Purpose of Humanities Education: A Historical Perspective from the Mid-Twentieth-Century United States,” in , ed. Herman Paul (Bloomsbury, 2023).

Selected as a 2023 Choice Outstanding Academic Title.

Claire Rydell Arcenas, “Justifying an Energetic Executive: Theory and Practice in The Federalist,” in , ed. Ben Lowe (University Press of Florida, 2021).

Claire Rydell Arcenas, “How to Write about Influence: Assessing Edmund Burke’s Conservative Legacies,” The Historical Journal 63 no. 2 (March 2020): 495-505, .

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