Jason M. Opal
Jason M. Opal is an associate professor of history at McGill University, where he teaches a range of courses on early American history. His most recent classes have been about slavery and antislavery in the revolutionary period (1760s–1820s) and about the history of American families. He is most interested in social and cultural history and in the debates of the postrevolutionary period over what kind of nation or society the United States should be. His first book, Beyond the Farm: National Ambitions in Rural New England (2008), was about ambition among New England farm families. His current book project, Avenging the People: Andrew Jackson, the Rule of Law, and the American Nation (2017) centers on the problem of vengeance—extra-legal violence and punishment—and a man who built his life around its pursuit: Andrew Jackson.
Lectures
- "Justice to my Creditors": Andrew Jackson, the Panic of 1819, and the Fate of Popular Sovereignty in the Early Republic
- Did the Founders Want the United States to Follow International Law? *
- How Donald Trump Is Like Andrew Jackson *
- The "Great National Question": Andrew Jackson's 1818 Invasion of Florida and International Law in the Early Republic
- The Case against the Family Farm: Ambition, Nationalism, and Antilocalism in the Early American Republic
- The War for Tennessee, 1792–1794: Indian "Nations," White "Christians," and the Education of Andrew Jackson
- Vigilante Nation: The Long History of "Populist" Violence against People of Color *
Lectures marked with a * are offered as part of the OAH's initiative, Historians' Perspectives on the Rise of Donald Trump.