Lecture: Alexis de Tocqueville in America, September 10-11, 2024

The Ernest J. Walters, Jr. Memorial Lecture Series

“So I did not study America just to satisfy curiosity . . . I sought there lessons from which we might profit” (Democracy in America).

Part 1 – September 10, 2024 – 5:00-6:30PM – Burgiss Theater, Trone Student Center

Part 2 – September 11, 2024 – 5:00-6:30PM – Watkins Room, Trone Student Center

Part 1 Speaker:

Sarah Gustafson (The Catholic University of America)

Sarah Gustafson is Assistant Professor of Politics at The Catholic University of America. She earned her BA from Davidson College, MA from University College of London, and her PhD in Political Theory from the Department of Government, Harvard University. Her research focus is Alexis de Tocqueville and nineteenth-century political thought, with additional interests in Ancient and Medieval Political Philosophy, contemporary and normative political theory, virtue ethics, Catholic Social and Political Thought, and Ethics and Business. Her dissertation examines Tocqueville’s concept of charity, especially its relationship to his accounts of self-interest rightly understood, associations, and welfare. Gustafson is no stranger to Furman. In January 2024, she accompanied Dr. Robert Putnam to the Tocqueville platform where they presented their paper “Two Voyages of Discovery: How the 1831 Journeys of Darwin and Tocqueville Changed our Understanding of the World.”

Part 2 Speaker:

Olivier Zunz (University of Virginia)

Olivier Zunz is James Madison Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Virginia. He has held visiting appointments at the Collège de France and the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, among others. Zunz earned his BA at Université de Paris X-Nanterre and his third-cycle doctorate and state doctorate from the Université de Paris I, Panthéon-Sorbonne. He has received fellowships and research grants from the Ford Foundation, Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership, John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Science Foundation. He has authored or edited 12 books, including The Changing Face of Inequality (1982); Making America Corporate, 1870-1920 (1990); and Why the American Century? (1998). His Philanthropy in America: A History (2012) is the first book to explore in depth the 20th-century growth of this unique phenomenon. His most recent book is The Man Who Understood Democracy: The Life of Alexis de Tocqueville (2022). In 2011 Zunz was named Officier of the French Ordre National du Mérite by the French Government.

View Part 1 Here

View Part 2 Here