Professor Frank Cogliano (BA, MA, PhD, F.R.Hist.)

Professor of American History

Biography

Background

A native of Massachusetts, I was educated at Tufts University and completed my graduate work at Boston University. In 1992 I came to Britain to take up a temporary lectureship. Originally I intended to stay for a year. Happily, here I remain, having come to Edinburgh in 1997.

Responsibilities & affiliations

Advisory Board, International Center for Jefferson Studies

Undergraduate teaching

  • The Age of Jefferson
  • The Frontier in American History
  • Pre-Revolutionary America
  • American History 2

Postgraduate teaching

  • The Intellectual History of the American Revolution
  • Early American Diplomatic History
  • Themes in American Historiography

Current PhD students supervised

Name - Degree - Thesis topic - Supervision type - Link

      - PhD - Free Labourers and Yeomen Farmers: Civil Society in the Age of Hamilton and Jefferson - Primary -

Grier, Devin - PhD - TBC - Primary - link

Griggs, Michael - PhD - Scottish Covenanters 'theology of politics' and their later influence on the American Revolution, specifically in North Carolina through the pamphlets and sermons of various Presbyterian ministers - Primary - link

Jordan, Alley - PhD - TBC - Primary - link

      - PhD - Political Anglicanism in the Chesapeake, 1760-1800 - Primary -

      - PhD - Conduct Books to Novels: Popular Enlightenment in Literature in Britain and America, 1760 - Secondary -

MacIver, Iain - PhD - A Comparative Study of the last Royal Governors of the American colonies and the first Governors of the newly independent states. - Primary - link

       - PhD - John Witherspoon and the Atlantic Enlightenment - Primary -

       - PhD - Portraits of Thomas Jefferson - Primary

Past PhD students supervised

Name - Degree - Thesis topic - Supervision type - Completion year

Judge, Jane - PhD - Nation and State in the Belgian Revolution, 1787-1790 - Primary - 2015

Dziennik, Matthew - PhD - The Fatal Land: War, Empire, and the Highland Soldier in British America, 1756-1783 - Primary - 2011

MacIver, Iain - MScR - A Comparative Study of the last Royal Governors of the American colonies and the first Governors of the newly independent states. - Primary - 2010

Duthille, Remy - PhD - Between Patriotism and Universalism: Radical Discourse in Great Britain, 1768-1789 - Primary - 2010

Phimister, Kirsten - PhD - Religion and Politics in Revolutionary America: Massachusetts and Virginia as Case Studies - Primary - 2008

Dziennik, Matthew - MScR - The Fatal Land: War, Empire, and the Highland Soldier in British America, 1756-1783 - Primary - 2007

Karali, Vassiliki - MScR - Political Anglicanism in the Chesapeake, 1760-1800 - Primary - 2004

Phimister, Kirsten - MScR - Religion and Politics in Revolutionary America: Massachusetts and Virginia as Case Studies - Primary - 2003

Research summary

Places: 

  • North America

Themes: 

  • Imperialism

Periods: 

  • Eighteenth Century
  • Nineteenth Century

Research interests

My research is mainly concerned with the political, cultural and diplomatic history of revolutionary and early national America.  I am the author or editor of nine books and have published scholarly articles and book chapters in Britain and the United States. My first major book, No King, No Popery considered the history of anti-Catholicism in New England during the era of the American Revolution. A subsequent study presented a micro-history of sailors imprisoned by the British during the American War of Independence. In 2008 I edited a collection on The Atlantic Enlightenment with Professor Susan Manning of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities. My 2006 book, Thomas Jefferson: Reputation and Legacy, offered the first study of Jefferson’s reputation in fifty years. I recently edited the Blackwell Companion to Thomas Jefferson. My latest book, Emperor of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson's Foreign Policy​ was published by Yale University Press in 2014. I run a week-long seminar on the Age of Jefferson for schoolteachers from across the United States at Monticello sponsored by the Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History.  I have been president of the Scottish Association for the Study of America and served on editorial board of the Journal of the Early Republic. I am currently a member of the advisory board of the International Center for Jefferson Studies. I am prepared to supervise graduate students in a number of areas—eighteenth and nineteenth-century American history generally, and the political, diplomatic, cultural, intellectual, and religious history of the early American republic more specifically.

Current research interests

US politics during the 1790s.

Project activity

Revising and expanding Revolutionary America: A Political History for a third edition to be published in 2017.

The list below is a subset of the information held on the University of Edinburgh PURE system, and includes Books, Chapters, Articles and Conference contributions. For a full list, including details of other publication types (e.g. reviews), please see the Edinburgh Research Explorer page for Professor Frank Cogliano.

Books - Authored

Cogliano, F. (2016) Revolutionary America, 1763-1815: A Political History. London: Routledge

Cogliano, F. (2014) Emperor of Liberty: Thomas Jefferson’s Foreign Policy. New Haven: Yale University Press

Cogliano, F. (2009) Revolutionary America, 1763-1815: A Political History. London: Routledge

Cogliano, F. (2006) Thomas Jefferson: Reputation and Legacy. Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press

Cogliano, F. (2001) American Maritime Prisoners in the Revolutionary War: The Captivity of William Russell. Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press

Cogliano, F. (2000) Revolutionary America: A Political History, 1763-1815. London: Routledge

Cogliano, F. (1995) No King, No Popery: Anti-Catholicism in Revolutionary New England. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press

Books - Edited

Cogliano, F. and Griffin, P. (eds.) (forthcoming) Ireland and America: Empire, Revolution, and Sovereignty. University of Virginia Press

Cogliano, F. (ed.) (2011) A Companion to Thomas Jefferson. Wiley-Blackwell

Cogliano, F. and Phimister, K. (eds.) (2011) Revolutionary America, 1763-1815: A Sourcebook. Routledge

Cogliano, F. and Manning, S. (eds.) (2008) The Atlantic Enlightenment. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate Publishing

Articles

Cogliano, F. (2010) Revisiting the American Revolution. History Compass, 8, pp. 951-963DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1478-0542.2010.00705.x

Cogliano, F. (2009) Zanim doszlo do Amerykanskiej Rewolucji, lata 1763-1776. Wiadomsci Historyczne, 2, pp. 41760

Cogliano, F. (2005) Founders Chic. History, 89, pp. 411-419DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-229X.2005.00341.x

Mason, R., Cogliano, F. and Day, A. (2003) Review article: The United States of America. Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature, 87, pp. 160-176DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.0066-3832.2003.00011.x

Mason, R., Cogliano, F. and Day, A. (2002) Review article: The United States of America. Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature, 86, pp. 174-190DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8314.00104

Mason, R., Cogliano, F. and Day, A. (2001) Review article: The United States of America. Annual Bulletin of Historical Literature, 85, pp. 173-189DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8314.00089

Cogliano, F. (1999) America and the French Revolution. History, 84, pp. 658-65

Cogliano, F. (1998) "We All Hoisted the American Flag:" National Identity among American Prisoners in Britain during the American Revolution. Journal of American Studies, 32, pp. 19-37

Cogliano, F. (1998) "We fled from the valley of destruction" American escapes from Mill and Forton Prisons, 1777-1782. The American Neptune, 58, pp. 125-43

Cogliano, F. (1993) Deliverance from luxury: Pope's day and social conflict in Boston, 1745-1765. Studies in Popular Culture, 15, pp. 15-28

Cogliano, F. (1992) Nil Desperandum Christo Duce: The New England Crusade Against Louisbourg 1745. Essex Institute Historical Collections, 128, pp. 180-207

Cogliano, F. (1992) To Obey Jesus Christ and General Washington: Massachusetts, Catholicism and the Eastern Indians. Maine Historical Society Quarterly, 32, pp. 108-33

Chapters

Cogliano, F. and Griffin, P. (forthcoming) Ireland and America: Empire and Revolution. In: Ireland and America: Empire, Revolution, and Sovereignty. University of Virginia Press

Cogliano, F. (2019) Merrill Peterson and the Apostle of Freedom: Thomas Jefferson and the New Nation. In: McDonald, R. (ed.) Thomas Jefferson's Lives: Biographers and the Battle for History. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, pp. 244-264

Cogliano, F. (2017) Failed filibusters: The Kemper Rebellion, the Burr Conspiracy and Early American Expansion. In: Li, J. (ed.) The Breadth and Depth of American History: Collected Papers from Centenary Symposium to Remember Yang Shengmao. Beijing: The Commercial Press (H.K.), pp. 319-353

Cogliano, F. (2013) A “Philosophical vedette”: William Dunbar, Thomas Jefferson, and the Republic of Letters. In: Spahn, H. and Nicolaisen, P. (eds.) Cosmopolitanism and Nationhood in the Age of Jefferson. Heidleberg: The Universitätsverlag Winter

Cogliano, F. (2013) "The whole object of the present controversy”: The Early Constitutionalism of Paine and Jefferson. In: Newman, S. and Onuf, P. (eds.) Paine and Jefferson in the Age of Revolutions. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, pp. 26-48

Cogliano, F. (2012) Preservation and education: Monticello and the Thomas Jefferson Foundation. In: Cogliano, F. (ed.) A Companion to Thomas Jefferson. John Wiley & Sons Inc., pp. 510-525

Cogliano, F. (2008) The Enlightenment and the Atlantic. In: Manning, S. and Cogliano, F. (eds.) The Atlantic Enlightenment. Ashgate Publishing, pp. 1-19

Cogliano, F. (2007) 'Relics of the past generation': maritime prisoners of war and the memory of the American Revolution. In: Paul A Gilje, W. (ed.) Pirates, Jack, Tav, and Memory: New Directions in American Maritime History. Mystic Seaport, pp. 95-114

Cogliano, F. (2006) Exposing the Idolatry of the Romish Church: Anti-popery in Colonial New England. In: Mathisen, R. (ed.) Critical Issues in American Religious History: A Reader, 2nd edition. Baylor University Press: Waco, pp. 61-71

Cogliano, F. (2004) Baseball and American Exceptionalism. In: Smith, A. and Porter, D. (eds.) Sport and National Identity in the Post-War World. Routledge, pp. 145-167

Cogliano, F. (2004) The Sixty Years' War in North America. In: Mortimer, G. (ed.) Early Modern Military History. Palgrave Macmillan, pp. 155-76

Cogliano, F. (2001) Exposing the Idolatry of the Romish Church: Anti-popery in Colonial New England. In: Mathisen, R. (ed.) Critical Issues in American Religious History: A Reader. Baylor University Press: Waco, pp. 60-72

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