About
DEAN GRODZINS is a Senior Researcher at the Harvard Business School, where he works with Professor David Moss on the High School Case Method Project to transform the teaching of American democracy in high schools, and a Visiting Scholar at the Massachusetts Historical Society, where he is writing on the fugitive slave crisis in Boston (1850-64). Dean has published widely on American history, including the prize-winning biography American Heretic: Theodore Parker and Transcendentalism (University of North Carolina Press), and is first author of five of the case studies, and co-author of two others, in Moss, Democracy: A Case Study (Harvard: Belknap, 2017). He received a Ph.D. from Harvard and has served as a lecturer on history and literature at Harvard and as Associate Professor of History at Meadville Lombard Theological School. He frequently delivers public presentations on American history and has extensive experience as an academic editor. He also drew a comic strip for twenty years. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife and daughter.
Featured Work
American Heretic: Theodore Parker and Transcendentalism
Theodore Parker (1810-1860) was a powerful preacher who rejected the authority of the Bible and of Jesus, a brilliant scholar who became a popular agitator for the abolition of slavery and for women's rights, and a political theorist who defined democracy as "government of all the people, by all the people, for all the people"--words that inspired Abraham Lincoln. Parker had more influence than anyone except Ralph Waldo Emerson in shaping Transcendentalism in America.
In American Heretic, Dean Grodzins offers a compelling account of the remarkable first phase of Parker's career, when this complex man--charismatic yet awkward, brave yet insecure--rose from poverty and obscurity to fame and notoriety as a Transcendentalist prophet. Grodzins reveals hitherto hidden facets of Parker's life, including his love for a woman who was not his wife, and presents fresh perspectives on Transcendentalism. Grodzins explores Transcendentalism's religious roots, shows the profound religious and political issues at stake in the "Transcendentalist controversy," and offers new insights into Parker's Transcendentalist colleagues, including Emerson, Margaret Fuller, and Bronson Alcott. He traces, too, the intellectual origins of Parker's epochal definition of democracy as government of, by, and for the people.
Other Works
Awards and Recognition
- Alan Nevins Prize
