Sep 27, 2021 - The 2021 Carls-Schwerdfeger History Lectureship will feature prize-winning historian Dr. David A. Bell, the Sidney and Ruth Lapidus Professor in the Era of North Atlantic Revolutions at Princeton University. He is an internationally recognized authority on the history of early modern France and Napoleon Bonaparte.
Bell will speak twice on Monday, October 25. At 2:00 p.m., he will lecture on “Napoleon Bonaparte and the Origins of Modern Total War” in the Carl Grant Events Center. His evening talk will be on “George Washington, Napoleon Bonaparte, and the Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution” at 7:15 p.m. in the G. M. Savage Memorial Chapel. Masks are recommended for these lectures. Both lectures are free and open to the public.
After graduating magna cum laude with a B.A. in history and literature in 1983 from Harvard University where he was Phi Beta Kappa, Bell earned his M.A. (1987) and Ph.D. (1991) in history at Princeton University. He also spent the 1983-1984 academic year studying at the highly esteemed École Normale Supérieure in Paris, France, with a fellowship from Harvard.
Bell is a prize-winning author of seven books. His books include: Men on Horseback: The Power of Charisma in the Age of Revolution (2020); The West: A New History (2018), coauthored with Anthony Grafton; Shadows of Revolution: Reflections on France, Past and Present (2016); Napoleon: A Concise Biography (2015); The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of War As We Know It (2007), for which he won the Louis Gottschalk Prize from the American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies; The Cult of the Nation in France: Inventing Nationalism, 1680-1800 (2001), which earned him the Leo Gershoy Prize from the American Historical Association; and Lawyers and Citizens: The Making of a Political Elite in Old Regime France (1994), for which he received the Pinkney Prize from the Society for French Historical Studies.
Prior to his appointment to the history faculty at Princeton in 2010, Bell taught at Johns Hopkins University (1996-2010) where he also served as the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences (2007-2010), and at Yale University (1990-1996). In addition, Bell has been a Visiting Professor at two of France’s most prestigious institutions of higher learning and a Visiting Fellow at Tokyo University in Japan.