Cynthia Van Buren Lecture Series Continues with Dr. Rachel Shelden’s Lecture on the Politics of the U. S. Supreme Court in the Era of Andrew Jackson

Dr. Rachel A. Shelden will deliver the Fall 2024 Cynthia Van Buren Lecture, “Politics & the U.S. Supreme Court in the Age of Jackson,” at Cumberland University’s Alumni Hall on Wednesday, September 4, at 7:00 p.m.

Dr. Shelden is an associate professor of history and the director of the George and Ann Richards Civil War Era Center at Penn State University. She is a historian of U.S. politics, constitutionalism, and law in the nineteenth century. Shelden is the author of Washington Brotherhood: Politics Social Life, and the Coming of the Civil War (UNC Press, 2013) and the co-editor of A Political Nation: New Directions in Mid-Nineteenth Century American Political History (UVA Press, 2012). Her work has been featured in the Washington Post, the Atlantic, and NPR. Shelden is an Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer and received a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship for her current book project. Her manuscript, The Political Supreme Court, under contract with UNC Press’s Ferris & Ferris trade division, is due out in 2026.

The lecture series is named in honor of the late Cynthia Van Buren, a Palm Beach, Florida, philanthropist who bequeathed a $100,000 gift to the Papers of Martin Van Buren presidential papers project upon her death in 2020.

“We are very pleased to have Dr. Shelden present the fall lecture,” said Dr. Mark Cheathem, project director for the Papers of Martin Van Buren. “She is an established, well-respected scholar whose insights on the history of the U.S. Supreme Court will help us better understand a branch of government that has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years.”

The Papers of Martin Van Buren is making approximately 14,000 documents written by or sent to the eighth president accessible at the project website, vanburenpapers.org. Cumberland University, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and the National Endowment for the Humanities sponsor the project. It is produced in partnership with the Center for Digital Editing at the University of Virginia.