Professor Jacob Charles Presents "The Second Amendment: History, Politics, and the Future of Democracy" -- Vanderbilt University

Professor Jacob D. Charles presented "The Second Amendment: History, Politics, and the Future of Democracy" at the American Political History Conference held at the Vanderbilt College of Arts and Science.  The conference, titled "Reconstructing Democracy: Power, Politics, and Participation," was held on June 6-8.

From Vanderbilt College of Arts and Science:

The study of history and the politics of memory have become key dividing lines in the struggle over the future of democracy in the United States. This conference aims to bring historical research and historical thinking to understanding contemporary challenges to democracy. It will also consider how innovations in political history can help deepen the project of democratic reconstruction: the rebuilding of institutional trust (and trustworthy institutions), meaningful democratic participation, and the roles of the people in U.S. politics and political culture.

This event will bring political historians into conversation with one another and the broader public to grapple with the idea of what it means to study U.S. political history. It will challenge the traditional categories of political history — left and right, elite and populist, rural and urban — as well as the traditional sub field divisions that silo the discipline. It will create opportunities to build networks, share new research, debate ideas, think about the implications of this research in our contemporary setting, and discuss strategies for public engagement.

We invite panel and paper submissions that reflect the diversity of the field of American political history, from the colonial era to recent history, and that will generate debates and discussions over how to define and pursue political history.  As such, we especially encourage round table and workshop ideas that will foster dynamic conversations about how we write and understand political history across time periods, sub fields, and disciplines. We welcome sessions that feature differing sub field dynamics debating topics that challenge traditional paradigms in political history and address broad historical time periods. We especially encourage conversations that include scholars working in the eighteenth and nineteenth century.

Additional information may be found at American Political History Conference