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American History Mondays with Dr. Richard Bell: The Benevolent Empire
Beginning in the 1790s and continuing till about the 1840s, America went through a Second Great Awakening, a new series of religious revivals that helped to turn the United States into a nation of church-goers, a transformation that has profoundly shaped American history ever since. One of the consequences of this Second Great Awakening was a massive new interest in making America a better place to live.
Together we’ll explore how these revivals of evangelical religion spurred the rise of dozens of new social reform movements—the temperance campaign, for instance—that together mark the early nineteenth century as an Age of Reform.
Dr. Richard Bell is Professor of History at the University of Maryland. He holds a PhD from Harvard University and has won more than a dozen teaching awards, including the University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching. He has held major research fellowships at Yale, Cambridge, the Library of Congress and is the recipient of the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship and the National Endowment of the Humanities Public Scholar Award. Professor Bell is author of the new book "Stolen: Five Free Boys Kidnapped into Slavery and their Astonishing Odyssey Home," which was shortlisted for the George Washington Prize and the Harriet Tubman Prize.
This conversation is suitable for all ages.
90 minutes, including a 30 minute Q&A.