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Peter Onuf

PETER S. ONUF is the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of History, Emeritus, at the University of Virginia, where he has taught for more than twenty years. Onuf is also Senior Fellow at Monticello’s Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies.

A leading scholar of Jefferson and the early American republic, he is the author, co-author, and editor of numerous books including (as author) Jefferson’s Empire: The Language of American Nationhood (2001), The Mind of Thomas Jefferson (2007), and (as editor) Jeffersonian Legacies (1993). He is co-author with Annette Gordon-Reed of Most Blessed of the Patriarchs: Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination 2016), a finalist for the 2017 George Washington Prize.

He is also co-host (with Brian Balogh and Edward Ayers) of the weekly podcast Backstory with the American history guys.

Articles by this Author

Thomas Jefferson’s Declaration of Independence announced a new epoch in world history, transforming a provincial tax revolt into a great struggle to liberate humanity from the tyrannies of the past.
Important new information on the central figure in the early American republic has surfaced with the publication of new volumes of Jefferson's journals and correspondence.