2026 Fall Speaker Series | The Will of the People
T. H. Breen, professor of American History at the University of Vermont, spotlights a crucial missing piece in the stories we tell about the American Revolution. Across the thirteen colonies, it was ordinary people who became the face of resistance. Without them the Revolution would have failed. Everyday men and women negotiated the revolutionary experience, accepting huge personal sacrifice, setting up daring experiments in self-government, and going to extraordinary lengths to preserve the rule of law.
About T.H. Breen
T.H. Breen is a professor of American History at the University of Vermont and an Early American historian interested in the history of political thought, material culture, and cultural anthropology. A Guggenheim fellow, he has held appointments at the Institute for Advanced Study and the National Humanities Center as well as the Pitt Professorship of American History and Institutions at Cambridge University and the Harmsworth Professorship at Oxford University. He has won several awards for distinguished teaching, including one from the Northwestern Alumni Society. His publications include five monographs, portions of the highly successful undergraduate text, America: Past and Present, and books including Marketplace of Revolution: How Consumer Politics Shaped American Independence, American Patriots: The Revolution of the People, George Washington’s Journey: The President Forges a New Nation, and The Will of the People: The Revolutionary Birth of America. Breen has also served as a special consultant for Colonial Williamsburg. In 2017 he was appointed the John Kluge Professor of American Law and Governance at the Library of Congress. Breen is the founding director of the Chabraja Center for Historical Studies, and has a Ph.D. from Yale.
