By Annette Windhorn
The 250th anniversary of the signing of the US Declaration of Independence invites not only curiosity about early American and Revolutionary-era history but also reflection on how historical events have shaped the nation as it exists today. Here, a few historians discuss how their work, frequently published with university presses, meets the current moment, fueling widespread interest in America’s past and informing our better understanding of the present.
Historians have long added nuanced interpretations of American history to the public debate, said Jim Downs, co-author most recently of US History at 250, with Catherine Clinton, part of the History in the Headlines series they edit for the University of Georgia Press. He offered this context for the events and ideas of 1776: “Abstract notions of liberty derived from Enlightenment thought were often difficult to grasp on their own, but the presence of enslaved people in the colonies crystallized ideas about liberty, citizenship, and rights. The Revolution also unfolded on a continent populated by Indigenous nations whose histories are essential to understanding the founding. And it marked a profound break from monarchy and the beginning of a democratic experiment.” (For more on how historical anniversaries like the US semiquincentennial invite historians to enter public conversation, read Jim Downs’ article in LitHub.)
“My work often addresses the centrality of race in the American story, from the very foundations of the country,” Annette Gordon-Reed said, “including the tension between ‘all men are created equal’—the words in the Declaration of Independence—and the reality of slavery and the doctrine of white supremacy in 1776.” A Pulitzer Prize- and National Book Award-winning author, Gordon-Reed is the editor most recently of Jefferson on Race: A Reader (Princeton University Press, 2026).
In her first book, When the Declaration of Independence Was News, recently published by Oxford University Press, Emily Sneff looks beyond the Declaration’s powerful authors and signers in the Continental Congress to the many others who reacted to and spread the news of its signing, inviting modern readers to “feel a human connection to the founding.”
Elliott West and Beth Lew-Williams hear reverberations from the 1800s in today’s America as well. “We cannot truly understand our nation and its path to today without recognizing and studying the West and its history,” said West, whose Continental Reckoning: The American West in the Age of Expansion (University of Nebraska Press, 2023) won a Pulitzer Prize finalist and Bancroft Prize in American History. He noted that westward expansion in the second half of the nineteenth century increased the size of the United States by about a third and made the US a truly continental nation; introduced natural resources that powered the country’s rapid economic growth and rise as a major global power; and, along with the Civil War, fostered the growth of the federal government’s roles and powers.
“I look at a formative period in the history of US immigration control, a time when the most feared immigrants in America were those arriving from China,” said Lew-Williams, author most recently of the Bancroft Prize-winning John Doe Chinaman: A Forgotten History of Chinese Life Under American Racial Law (Harvard University Press, 2025). “Starting in the 1850s, Chinese immigrants faced racism, nativism, violence, and legal discrimination at both the local and federal levels. This anti-immigrant campaign had a long legacy, one we continue to contend with today.”
For these historians, university presses have played an important role in advancing research and ideas, starting with the publication of their very first books.
“University presses contribute to the overall intellectual health of our society.” – Elliott West
“I think a university press imprint immediately signals the seriousness of the work,” said Gordon-Reed, who published her first book, Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings: An American Controversy (1997), with the University of Virginia Press and has published three books with other university presses. She also praised the usefulness of the feedback provided by peer review—a hallmark of university press practice.
Sneff sought out “the rigorous review and editing process which a university press can provide” for her first book project, which encompassed a decade of public history work. “The reviewers and editors were generous in their feedback and helped me to feel as if I was on the right track with telling the stories I wanted to tell and reaching the audiences I wanted to reach during this anniversary moment.”
“A university press guided me, and so many others, through the process of writing and publishing my first book,” Lew-Williams said, noting that she returned to that publisher—Harvard University Press—with her second book, “because I wanted the rigor of peer review and the freedom to write a complex and challenging history.”
“I value university presses because they understand the craft of historical scholarship,” said Downs, the author or editor of ten books published with university presses, beginning with Sick From Freedom: African American Sickness and Suffering during the Civil War and Reconstruction (Oxford University Press, 2012). “They appreciate footnotes, engage seriously with historiographical debates, and remain committed to advancing knowledge. They encourage historians to tell compelling stories while also preserving the rigor and complexity that define our discipline.”
“University presses contribute to the overall intellectual health of our society,” said West, who has published all nine of his books with university presses. “Their guiding interest is in furthering the pursuits of evolving fields of scholarship—efforts that otherwise would surely be neglected or ignored entirely.”
“Now, when the headwinds to nonfiction publishing are severe, and trade presses seem to be in a state of continuous editorial transition, university presses are even more essential,” said Fitz Brundage, author or editor of ten books with university presses—including his first, Under Sentence of Death: Essays on Lynching in the South (University of North Carolina Press, 1997)—and a former member of the UNC Press board. “Indeed, without university presses vast swathes of the humanities and social sciences might disappear from the marketplace entirely.”
Explore the US at 250 bookshop and reading list round-up from the Association of University Presses, for more reflections on US history, 250 years on.
Fitz Brundage is the William B. Umstead Professor of History at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.
Jim Downs is the Gilder Lehrman-National Endowment for the Humanities Professor of History at Gettysburg College and a 2025-2026 Guggenheim Fellow.
Annette Gordon-Reed is the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University.
Beth Lew-Williams is a professor of history and directs the Asian American studies program at Princeton University.
Emily Sneff has been a consulting curator for special exhibitions on the 250th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, including at the Museum of the American Revolution in Philadelphia.
Elliott West is the Alumni Distinguished Professor of History Emeritus at the University of Arkansas.
Annette Windhorn is the External Communications Manager of the Association of University Presses.