Mark Schmeller

• 2024 Spring
  • HST 305 America in Crisis: The Civil War and Reconstruction
  • MAX 123 Critical Issues for the United States
  • HST 495 Distinction Thesis in History
• 2023 Fall
  • HST 304 Age of Jefferson and Jackson
  • MAX 123 Critical Issues for the United States
  • HST 496 Distinction Thesis in History
• 2023 Summer
  • IDE 880 Adv Seminar/Sel Top - Sem/ST in American History
  • HST 101 American History to 1865
  • HST 300 Selected Topics - Conspiracies in U.S. History
• 2023 Spring
  • MAX 123 Critical Issues for the United States
  • HST 401 Senior Seminar - Conspiracy Theories in US Hist
• 2022 Fall
  • HST 305 America in Crisis: The Civil War and Reconstruction
• 2022 Summer
  • IDE 880 Adv Seminar/Sel Top - Sem/ST in American History
  • HST 102 American History Since 1865
  • HST 101 American History to 1865
• 2022 Spring
  • HST 304 Age of Jefferson and Jackson
  • MAX 123 Critical Issues for the United States

Mark Schmeller is a historian of early American and United States political thought and culture with particular interests in law, communications and political economy. He is the author of "Invisible Sovereign: Imagining Public Opinion from the Revolution to Reconstruction." Published by Johns Hopkins University Press in 2016, "Invisible Sovereign" locates the origins of the concept of public opinion in the 18th-century rejection of fear as a legitimate instrument of government, and traces its development through debates over public credit, partisanship, honor and dueling, moral and religious psychology, and slavery.

Schmeller has received fellowships from the Mellon Foundation, the Library Company of Philadelphia and the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University. He is currently at work on a history of the 1826 kidnapping and murder of William Morgan, a Freemason who had threatened to reveal the secrets of the fraternal order.

• Book
  • Schmeller, M. G., Invisible Sovereign: Imagining Public Opinion from the Revolution to Reconstruction. Johns Hopkins University Press, 2016.
• Journal Articles
  • Schmeller, M. G., "Twelve Hungry Men: The Reform of Juries – and Jurors – in the Early American Republic." Law and History Review.
  • Schmeller, M. G., "The Political Economy of Opinion: Public Credit and Concepts of Public Opinion in the Age of Federalism." The Journal of the Early Republic, 2009.
• Book Chapters
  • Schmeller, M. G., "Public Opinion." In American Democracies. Emerson , B., Laski, G. (eds.) Oxford University Press, 2022.
  • Schmeller, M. G., "Freedom of the Press in the Nineteenth Century: From Republicanism to Mass Politics." In Freedom of the Press: Constitutional Protections, "Fake News," and Where do we Go From Here?. Virginia Law Foundation, 2017.
• Book Reviews
  • Schmeller, M. G., "Review of Perl-Rosenthal's Citizen Sailors: Becoming American in the Age of Revolution." In The Historian. , 2017.
  • Schmeller, M. G., "Review of Dubber's The Police Power: Patriarchy and the Foundations of American Government." In The Law and History Review. , 2008.
• Magazine/Trade Publications
  • Schmeller, M. G., "Killing King Caucus." Johns Hopkins University Press Blog.
  • Schmeller, M. G., "Newspapers and the Cant of Civility." Common-place, 2009.
• Newspaper Article
  • Schmeller, M. G., "The Conspiracy-fueled origin of the Christmas Poinsettia." The Washington Post, 2019.

Second Book Workshop, Conference of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, "Investigations" (July, 2019)

Social Science Research Council on Media, Technology, and Democracy in Historical Context, "Popular Excitements and the Paranoid Style: Anti-Masonry Reconsidered" (May, 2019)

Conference of the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, "The Book of Morgan" (July, 2018)

Erie Canal Museum, "Murder, Conspiracy, and Freemasonry in the Early Canal Era" (March, 2018)

Virginia Continuing Legal Education Seminar, "Freedom of the Press in the Nineteenth Century: From Republicanism to Mass Politics" (September, 2017)

Frank and Helen Pellicone Faculty Scholar Award, Syracuse University (2016)