Grant E. Stanton

Grant E. Stanton is a doctoral candidate whose research interests range widely across the landscape of early modern American (pre-1865) and Atlantic history. His work has been accepted for publication in popular and academic journals, including Early American Studies, The Boston Globe, and The Washington Post. His scholarship has received special recognition from, among others, the Colonial Society of Pennsylvania, Temple University, and the College of William and Mary. Grant's work has also been supported through fellowships offered by the National Endowment for the Humanities with Philadelphia's Christ Church, the International Center for Jefferson Studies, the LancasterHistory Museum, and the University of Pennsylvania.

Before coming to Penn, Grant received his M.A. and B.A. from the University of Chicago and the University of California - Santa Barbara, respectively, and taught courses in American and World history at Bakersfield College. In 2020, Grant was awarded Teaching Assistant of the Year by Penn's History Department. In Fall 2022, he will be teaching African American History to 1865 at the College of New Jersey.

Grant's dissertation studies the place of insults in structuring eighteenth-century Americans' moral world, as well as a deliciously irreverent lens for understanding the many crises brought to light in the American Revolution -- particularly those surrounding free speech, and the emergent notion that all human beings, qua human beings, have innate moral dignity.

Outside of his dissertation, Grant is studying the emergence of formal black politics in Massachusetts during the American Revolution, as well as the establishment, politicization, demise and revival of black education programs in Philadelphia during the same period.

Advisor: Daniel K. Richter

Committee: Sophia Rosenfeld, Sarah L.H. Gronningsater, Kathleen M. Brown, Warren Breckman