Mark Boonshoft

I am a Ph.D. Candidate in early American history at Ohio State. My work focuses on social, religious, and political history, across the colonial, revolutionary, and early national eras.

My dissertation traces the development of educational and cultural institutions in the mid-Atlantic from the First Great Awakening to the early nineteenth century, focusing especially on their role in shaping boundaries of participation and membership in both the formal and informal arenas of public life.

My work engages with the social sciences to help make sense of the changing nature of society and politics during the long era of the American Revolution. My article, "The Litchfield Network: Education, Social Capital, and the Rise and Fall of a Political Dynasty, 1784-1833," which explores some of these interests, will appear in the Journal of the Early Republic later this year.

I maintain a research interest in the constitutional and legal history of revolutionary and early national America. An article that grew out of this work, entitled “Doughfaces at the Founding: Federalists, Anti-Federalists, Slavery, and the Ratification of the Constitution in New York,” appeared in the summer 2012 issue of New York History. It is available here: http://www.academia.edu/2057149/Doughfaces_at_the_Founding_Federalists_A....

I have also co-organized the Ohio Seminar in Early American History and Culture (http://history.osu.edu/ohioseminar).