Peter S. Onuf


Peter S. Onuf is an American historian and professor known for his work on U.S. President Thomas Jefferson and Federalism. In 1989, he was named the Thomas Jefferson Memorial Foundation Professor of the University of Virginia, a chair he held until retiring in 2012.
The chair's previous occupants included Jefferson biographers Dumas Malone and Merrill D. Peterson; he was succeeded by Alan Taylor.

Life

A native New Englander, Onuf graduated from Johns Hopkins University, where he worked with eminent early American historian Jack P. Greene. He taught at Columbia University, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and Southern Methodist University. In 2008, he held the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History chair at the University of Oxford.
Onuf also acted as a cohost for the radio show BackStory with the American History Guys. In 2014, he taught a free online University of Virginia course on Thomas Jefferson.

Publications

  • ed.. Revolutionary Prophecies: The Founders and America's Future. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2021.
  • ed.. The Founding of Thomas Jefferson's University. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019. "Most Blessed of the Patriarchs": Thomas Jefferson and the Empire of the Imagination, Liveright, 2016.
  • ed.. Between Sovereignty and Anarchy: The Politics of Violence in the American Revolutionary Era. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2015.
  • ed.. Paine and Jefferson in the Age of Revolutions. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013.
  • ed.. State and Citizen: British America and the Early United States. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2013.
  • ed.. Thomas Jefferson, the Classical World, and Early America. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2011.
  • The Mind of Thomas Jefferson. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2007.
  • . Nations, Markets, and War: Modern History and the American Civil War, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2006.
  • ed.. The Revolution of 1800: Democracy, Race, and the New Republic. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2002.
  • Jefferson's Empire: The Language of American Nationhood. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001. Jeffersonian America. Oxford: Basil Blackwell's, 2001.
  • ed.. Sally Hemings and Thomas Jefferson: History, Memory, and Civic Culture. University Press of Virginia, 1999.
  • . All Over the Map: Rethinking Region and Nation in the United States. Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.
  • ed. Jeffersonian Legacies. University Press of Virginia, 1993.
  • , Federal Union, Modern World: The Law of Nations in an Age of Revolution, 1776–1814. Madison House, 1993.Patriots, redcoats, and loyalists New York : Garland, 1991.
  • , A Union of Interests: Politics and Economics in Revolutionary America, University Press of Kansas. 1990.
  • , The Midwest and the Nation. Indiana University Press, 1990.
  • Statehood and Union: A History of the Northwest Ordinance. Indiana University Press, 1987.
  • Origins of the Federal Republic: Jurisdictional Controversies in the United States, 1775–1787. University of Pennsylvania Press, 1983.