Lt. Col. Mark Boonshoft, Ph.D. - Virginia Military Institute
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Lt. Col. Mark Boonshoft, Ph.D.

Lt. Col. Mark Boonshoft, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

Office: 311 Scott Shipp Hall

Phone: 311 Scott Shipp Hall 540-464-7447

Email: boonshoftmd@vmi.edu

Fields: Early America, Constitutional History

Honors and Awards

  • History of Education Society Prize for “the most distinguished scholarly essay in educational history” published in the previous two years, 2022
  • Finalist, George Washington Book Prize, 2021
  • VMI Wilbur S. Hinman, Jr. ’26 Research Award, 2024
  • Research Fellowships awarded by: David Center for the American Revolution at the American Philosophical Society; William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan; George Washington Presidential Library at Mount Vernon; Revolution Institute of the Society of the Cincinnati; American Antiquarian Society; Library Company of Philadelphia; Historical Society of Pennsylvania; Virginia Historical Society

Associate professor Mark Boonshoft holds the Conrad M. Hall ’65 Chair in American Constitutional History and directs the Institute’s Constitutional history program. Boonshoft specializes in the American Revolution, early American political history, and the history of the Constitution. Before coming to VMI in 2022, Boonshoft received a B.A. from University at Buffalo-SUNY and a Ph.D. from Ohio State University, was a postdoctoral fellow at the New York Public Library, and taught at Norwich University and Duquesne University.

His first book, Aristocratic Education and the Making of the American Republic, examines founding-era debates over education as they related to the establishment of a democratic political system. The book was a finalist for the 2021 George Washington Book Prize. Boonshoft is currently working on a new book, tentatively titled The Violent Origins of Constitutional Democracy in Revolutionary New York. He also serves as co-editor of the Journal of the Early Republic, the leading journal of U.S. history before the Civil War.

At VMI, Boonshoft organizes the annual Constitution Day program, as well as other co-curricular programs focused on the Constitution and civics. He has directed several honors theses and received the Wilbur S. Wilbur S. Hinman, Jr. ’26 Research Award in 2024, which recognizes superior achievement of a cadet in research at VMI.

Courses Taught

The Founding of the U.S.
The History of Voting in America
Honors Seminar: The Civil War Amendments
Jacksonian America
Political Violence in the United States
Slavery and Abolition in the United States
U.S. Constitutional History

Publications

Books

  • Co-editor, American Revolutions in the Digital Age. Cornell University Press, 2024.
  • Aristocratic Education and the Making of the American Republic. University of North Carolina Press, 2020.

 

Articles and Book Chapters

  • Co-author of introduction and co-editor with Carolyn Eastman, Nora Slonimsky, and Ben Wright of “Information Wars: Communicating Trust and Suspicion in the Early Republic,” special issue (25,000 words) of Journal of the Early Republic, forthcoming, 2026.
  • Co-author, with Nora Slonimsky and Ben Wright. “Introduction: North America, the United States, and Multiple Revolutions.” In American Revolutions in the Digital Age, edited by Slonimsky, Boonshoft, and Wright, 1–14. Cornell University Press, 2024.
  • “Histories of Nineteenth-Century Education and the Civil War Era.” Journal of the Civil War Era 11, no. 2 (June 2022): 234–61.
  • “From Property to Education: Public Schooling, Race, and the Transformation of Suffrage in the Early National North.” Journal of the Early Republic 41, no. 3 (Fall 2021): 435–69.
  • “The Great Awakening, Presbyterian Education, and the Mobilization of Power in the Revolutionary Mid-Atlantic.” In The American Revolution Reborn, edited by Michael Zuckerman and Patrick Spero, 168–83. University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016.
  • “The Litchfield Network: Education, Social Capital, and the Rise and Fall of a Political Dynasty, 1784–1833.” Journal of the Early Republic 34, no. 4 (Winter 2014): 561–595.
  • “Doughfaces at the Founding: Federalists, Anti-Federalists, Slavery, and the Ratification of the Constitution in New York.” New York History 93, no. 3 (Summer 2012): 187–218.