Brian Schoen

Brian Schoen headshot
Associate Professor & Department Chair of History, and the James Richard Hamilton/Baker and Hostetler Professor of the Charles J. Ping Institute for Teaching of the Humanities
Bentley Annex 433
email address schoen@ohio.edu
phone number 740-593-4351

Education

  • Ph.D. in History from the University of Virginia
  • M.A. in History from the University of Virginia
  • B.A. from the University of Arkansas

Research

  • Nineteenth Century United States; Early Republic and Civil War
  • United States and the World
  • Political Economy

Brian Schoen (pronounced SHANE) is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of History and the James Richard Hamilton/Baker and Hostetler Professor of Humanities.

His research and teaching focus on the political, social, economic, and intellectual history of the early United States from its early struggles through its near dissolution during the Civil War. His research examines how international developments shaped regional perception, politics, commitment or opposition to slavery, and relationships to and within the federal union.

Before coming to Ohio University in 2006, he was a post-doctoral fellow at the Library Company of Philadelphia and taught at Georgetown University and California State University, Sacramento. In Fall 2023 Schoen was the Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Transnational Histories of North America, 1763-1877 at the University of Calgary. In 2014-15, he was the Fulbright-sponsored Mary Ball Washington Professor of American History, at the University College, Dublin. He is on the editorial board for the Journal of the Early Republic and also coedits Ohio University Press’s series, New Approaches to Midwestern Studies (opens in a new window).

He has presented to a variety of forums domestically and abroad including C-Span, WOUB-NPR affiliate and the HISTORY Hub. His book-length study of the statecraft of the sectional and secession crisis of 1860-1861 has been funded by the National Endowment for the

Humanities, the Fulbright Commission, the Filson Institute, and an Ohio University Baker Fund Grant.

Books

Recent Articles and Book Chapters

Teaching

  • HIST 2000: Survey of United States History, 1600-1877
  • HIST 2300: Capitalism and Its Critics: An Intellectual History
  • HIST 3008/5008: Early U.S. Republic (Age of Hamilton and Jackson)
  • HIST 3018/5018: History of the American South to 1900
  • HIST 3081/5081: The Civil War and its Aftermath
  • HIST 3111J: Historical Research and Writing
  • HIST 5081: The Civil War and its Aftermath
  • HIST 6901: Graduate Colloquium in US History

In addition to his regular course offerings, Schoen routinely offers Honors Tutorials in these and related areas, graduate independent studies, and M.A. thesis supervision in 19th-century U.S. history and related fields.