Lecture Description:

• Examines the politics of 19th century American expansion
• Emphasizes how conflicts over race, and the desire for a white settler nation, influenced the contours of expansion
• Focuses on the role of the federal government in regulating settlement patterns to shape and control where and how the nation expanded.

Speaker Bio:

Paul Frymer is a professor of Politics and Director of the Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University. His most recent book, coming out this spring with Princeton University Press, is entitled, Building an American Empire: The Era of Territorial and Political Expansion. Paul Frymer teaches and writes on topics in American law and politics, particularly as they intersect with issues of democratic representation, race and civil rights, and labor and employment. He is a former LAPA fellow (2004-2005), and served two terms as Acting Director (2009-2010 and 2012-2013) before his appointment as Director in 2015. He is the author of two books: Uneasy Alliances: Race and Party Competition in America (reissued in 2010 with an afterward on President Obama's election) and Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic Party (2008), both of which were published by Princeton University Press. He has also either authored or is currently writing about topics ranging from legal understandings of political parties to the racial politics of Hurricane Katrina and affirmative action to the role of law and politics in the historical development of American territorial expansion.