Sean Wilentz

Wilentz’s writings on music have focused on folk traditions and contemporary rock and roll, especially the work of Bob Dylan.  His liner notes for Dylan’s album, The Bootleg Series, Volume 6, Bob Dylan Live, 1964: Concert at Philharmonic Hall were honored with a Grammy nomination and an ASCAP-Deems Taylor Award for musical commentary.  He has written liner notes for other notable reissues, including the full Carnegie Hall concert of the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, recorded in 1963.  He is also the co-editor, with Greil Marcus, of The Rose & the Briar: Death, Love and Liberty in the American Ballad (2004). Since 2001, he has served as historian-in-residence at Dylan’s official website, www.bobdylan.com.

Wilentz is currently the George Henry Davis 1886 Professor of American History at Princeton University, where he has taught since 1979.  The winner of the Cotsen Family Distinguished Teaching Fellowship at Princeton (1993), he has also received numerous research awards, including fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, and the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library.

Wilentz’s historical scholarship has concentrated on the political and social history of the United States from the American Revolution to recent times. His best-known books of history are: Chants Democratic: New York City and the Rise of the American Working Class, 1788-1850 (1984; reissued with a new preface, 2004), winner of, among other prizes, the Albert J. Beveridge Award and the Frederick Jackson Turner Award; The Key of Liberty: The Life and Democratic Writings of William Manning, “A Laborer,” 1747-1814 (with Michael Merrill, (1993); The Kingdom of Matthias (with Paul E. Johnson, 1994); The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln (2005), winner of the Bancroft Prize among other honors, and a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize; and The Age of Reagan: A History, 1974-2008 (2008).  His successful textbook, Major Problems in the Early Republic, 1787-1848, originally published in 1992 by Houghton Mifflin, appeared in a second edition in 2007, co-edited with Jonathan H. Earle. Wilentz  has also edited collections of essays on Abraham Lincoln, and on political ritual and symbolism, as well as a modern edition of David Walker’s Appeal to the Coloured Citizens of the World. He serves as general editor of the acclaimed American Presidents’ series for Times Books/Henry Holt, and the James Madison Library in American Politics for Princeton University Press.