Claire Rydell Arcenas
Associate Professor of History
Contact
- Office
- LA 261
- claire.arcenas@umontana.edu
- Office Hours
I am on sabbatical for AY 2024-2025.
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 ÁÔÆæÖØ¿Ú (UM).
At UM, 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 UM, 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 .
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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, .
