Dunn, Susan 1945-

views updated

Dunn, Susan 1945-

PERSONAL:

Born July 19, 1945; daughter of Carl and Ruth Dunn. Education: Smith College, A.B. (cum laude), 1966; Harvard University, Ph.D., 1973.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Williamstown, MA. Office—Program in Leadership Studies, Stetson Hall, Williams College, Williamstown, MA 01267-2600. E-mail—susan.dunn@williams.edu.

CAREER:

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, teaching fellow, 1967-70, instructor, 1970-73; Wellesley College, Wellesley, MA, instructor, 1971-73; Williams College, Williamstown, MA, assistant professor, 1973-78, associate professor, 1978-88, professor of humanities, 1988—, chair of romance languages department, 1982-85. Visiting scholar at New York University, 1984-85, and Columbia University, 1985-86.

MEMBER:

Organization of American Historians, Southern Historical Association, Virginia Historical Society, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fellow of National Endowment for the Humanities, 1975-76, 1985, 1990, 1997, Camargo Foundation, 1991, American Philosophical Society, 1985-86, and Columbia University Seminar on Eighteenth-Century European Culture, 1991—.

WRITINGS:

Nerval et le roman historique, Editions Lettres Modernes (Paris, France), 1981.

The Deaths of Louis XVI: Regicide and the French Political Imagination, Princeton University Press (Princeton, NJ), 1994.

(Editor, with Gary Jeffrey Jacobsohn) Diversity and Citizenship: Rediscovering American Nationhood, Rowman & Littlefield (Lanham, MD), 1996.

Sister Revolutions: French Lightning, American Light, Faber & Faber (New York, NY), 1999.

(With James MacGregor Burns) The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America, Atlantic Monthly Press (New York, NY), 2001.

(With James MacGregor Burns) George Washington, Henry Holt (New York, NY), 2004.

Jefferson's Second Revolution: The Election Crisis of 1800 and the Triumph of Republicanism, Houghton Mifflin (Boston, MA), 2004.

(Editor) Something That Will Surprise the World: The Essential Writings of the Founding Fathers, Basic Books (New York, NY), 2006.

Dominion of Memories: Jefferson, Madison, and the Decline of Virginia, Basic Books (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to journals, including Harvard, History and Theory, and William and Mary Quarterly.

SIDELIGHTS:

Susan Dunn's areas of interest and expertise include American and French revolutionary history and the political careers of Theodore and Franklin Roosevelt.

In The Deaths of Louis XVI: Regicide and the French Political Imagination, Dunn briefly discusses the trial and beheading of the king by guillotine and then considers how French writers, including Lamartine, Hugo, Michelet, Balzac, and Camus interpreted his execution and how it affected the nation. Dunn investigates whether Louis XVI was punished for his own particular crimes or as a sacrifice to cleanse France of its ills and pave the way for a rebirth. A writer for the Virginia Quarterly Review said that Dunn shows that "the French are highly ambivalent about both the moral and political fact of such a move two hundred years after the fact." William Doyle noted in the Times Literary Supplement that biographer John Hardman is of the opinion that Louis XVI had no cult following after his death, as had Charles I. Doyle wrote that Dunn shows "how wrong this perception is." Doyle said Louis XVI's execution "marked French memory far more deeply and permanently than did that of Charles I in Britain." Christopher Smith wrote in the Journal of European Studies that The Deaths of Louis XVI "is a fascinating demonstration of the interest of historiography with an extra dimension given by treating poetry and fiction on an equal footing with writing on politics."

Dunn edited (with Gary Jeffrey Jacobsohn) Diversity and Citizenship: Rediscovering American Nationhood, a collection of six essays that were first presented as lectures commemorating the bicentennial of Williams College in 1993. Richard C. Sinopoli said in American Political Science Review that "this volume offers a good starting point for an educated general readership to begin thinking about our pluralistic democracy and the forms of civic attachments and obligations it can sustain."

In Sister Revolutions: French Lightning, American Light Dunn explores how the American and French Revolutions, both founded on the same Enlightenment ideals, have produced such different results. Booklist reviewer Mary Carroll wrote that Dunn "seeks to apply the lessons of the past to the present." The subtitle is taken from a 1790 letter written by Gouverneur Morris, a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia who later became the United States minister to France in 1792. He wrote that the French "have taken Genius instead of Reason for their Guide, adopted Experiment instead of Experience, and wander in the dark because they prefer Lightning to Light." The colonists made individual rights the priority of the struggles, while the French sought unity above all else, first as revolutionaries, then as subjects of Napoleon.

Library Journal reviewer Stephen Kent Shaw called the book an "insightful work." Paul Gray said in Time that Sister Revolutions "shows not only how the French and American experiments developed, but also why their differing examples have continued to beguile ambitious leaders."

In The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America, Dunn and coauthor, Pulitzer Prize-winner James MacGregor Burns, discuss the political legacies of Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor Roosevelt, and the influences that shaped the politics of the three figures. Burns and Dunn "do an excellent job of summarizing the political theology shared by these three Knickerbocker bluebloods," commented a reviewer for Publishers Weekly. The contributor concluded that the authors "do great justice to three remarkable lives superbly lived."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, February, 1996, Sylvia Neely, review of The Deaths of Louis XVI: Regicide and the French Political Imagination, p. 190.

American Political Science Review, March, 1997, Richard C. Sinopoli, review of Diversity and Citizenship: Rediscovering American Nationhood,, p. 189.

Booklist, October 15, 1999, Mary Carroll, review of Sister Revolutions: French Lightning, American Light, p. 414.

European History Quarterly, October, 1996, Nigel Aston, review of The Deaths of Louis XVI, p. 603.

French Review, May, 1983, Robert T. Denomme, review of Nerval et le roman historique, pp. 947-948; October, 1998, Gita May, review of The Deaths of Louis XVI, p. 128.

French Studies, January, 1999, Ceri Crossley, review of The Deaths of Louis XVI, p. 70.

Journal of European Studies, June, 1995, Christopher Smith, review of The Deaths of Louis XVI, p. 208.

Journal of Modern History, June, 1996, A. Lloyd Moote, review of The Deaths of Louis XVI, p. 463.

Library Journal, October 1, 1999, Stephen Kent Shaw, review of Sister Revolutions, p. 108.

Political Science Quarterly, fall, 1997, Philip Gleason, review of Diversity and Citizenship, p. 504.

Publishers Weekly, September 20, 1999, review of Sister Revolutions, p. 63; January 15, 2001, review of The Three Roosevelts: Patrician Leaders Who Transformed America, p. 59.

Smithsonian, December, 2000, Timothy Foote, review of Sister Revolutions, p. 145.

Time, December 6, 1999, Paul Gray, "Power to the People: How the Americans and French Revolted," p. 112.

Times Literary Supplement, March 10, 1995, William Doyle, "Another Bloodless Revolution?," p. 34.

Virginia Quarterly Review, spring, 1995, review of The Deaths of Louis XVI, p. 44.