Susan Dunn

Background

Susan Dunn was born on July 19, 1945, in the United States, to Carl and Ruth (Lesser) Dunn.

Education

Dunn received a bachelor's degree from Smith College in 1966. Dunn graduated from Harvard University with a Ph.D. in 1973.

Career

Susan Dunn is a professor of French literature and the history of ideas at Williams College. Her areas of interest and expertise include the modem French novel, (the French Revolution, politics and literature, history and literature, and French women authors. Her Nen'al et le roman Historique was called a “cognitive yet elegant essay” by Robert T. Denomme in French Review. Denomme said that “in every way, this slender volume looms as the first-rate appraisal of Nerval’s preoccupation with the historical novel. Because it makes so many penetrating comments on the genre as well as on Nerval’s novels, this is a study that both the student and the scholar will find useful for many years to come. Professor Dunn writes in clear and uncluttered French, and her lively exposition will not fail to capture the unflagging interest and attention of her readers.”

In The Deaths of Louis XVI: Regicide and the French Political Imagination Dunn briefly discusses the trial and beheading of the king by guillotine and then considers how French writers, including Lamartine, Hugo, Michelet, Balzac, and Camus interpreted his execution and how it affected the nation. Dunn investigates whether Louis XVI was punished for his own particular crimes or as a sacrifice to cleanse France of its ills and pave the way for a rebirth. A writer for the Virginia Quarterly Review said that Dunn shows that “the French are highly ambivalent about both the moral and political fact of such a move two hundred years after the fact.” William Doyle noted in the Times Literary Supplement that biographer John Hardman is of the opinion that Louis XVI had no cult following after his death, as had Charles I. Doyle wrote that Dunn shows “how wrong this perception is.” Doyle said Louis XVI’s execution “marked French memory far more deeply and permanently than did that of Charles I in Britain.” Christopher Smith wrote in the Journal of European Studies that The Deaths of Louis XVI “is a fascinating demonstration of the interest of historiography with an extra dimension given by treating poetry and fiction on an equal footing with writing on politics.”

Dunn was co-editor, with Gary Jeffrey Jacobsohn, of Diversity and Citizenship: Rediscovering American Nationhood, a collection of six essays that were first presented as lectures commemorating the bicentennial of Williams College in 1993. Political Science Quarterly reviewer Philip Gleason called Robert A. Dahl’s “Is Civic Virtue a Relevant Ideal in a Pluralist Democracy?” “the most abstractly theoretical. Rejecting both classical republicanism, which demands impossible levels of disinterestedness in individuals and consensus in society, and its polar opposite, hyperegoistic individualism, Dahl offers ‘robust civility’ as a more realistic ideal.” Sanford Levinson considers whether the practice of law should be allowed only to persons who are citizens. Pauline Maier discusses how the development of citizenship was shaped by the American Revolution, and Noah M. H. Pickus focuses on the Federalist Papers. Gleason wrote that in “Reflections of Citizenship and Diversity” Nathan Glazer “shows that the debate over multiculturalism involves sharply opposed readings of American history.” Richard C. Sinopoli said in American Political Science Review that only “Dred Scott and African American Citizenship” by Randall Kennedy “deals with a specific minority or ethnic group, and it focuses on the legal status of African American ‘freemen’ prior to the Civil War... One might have expected a book with this title to address some of the more perplexing issues of diversity and identity as they have been played out in U.S. politics and society. An essay on diversity and education would have been welcome, for example, given the occasion of these lectures. Nonetheless, this volume offers a good starting point for an educated general readership to begin thinking about our pluralistic democracy and the forms of civic attachments and obligations it can sustain.”

In Sister Revolutions: French Lightning, American Light Dunn explores how the American and French Revolutions, both founded on the same Enlightenment ideals, have produced such different results. Booklist reviewer Mary Carroll wrote that Dunn “seeks to apply the lessons of the past to the present.” The subtitle is taken from a 1790 letter written by Gouverneur Morris, a delegate to the 1787 Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia who later became the United States minister to France in 1792. He wrote that the French “have taken Genius instead of Reason for their Guide, adopted Experiment instead of Experience, and wander in the dark because they prefer Lightning to Light.” The colonists made individual rights the priority of the struggles, while the French sought unity above all else, first as revolutionaries than as subjects of Napoleon.

A Publishers Weekly reviewer wrote that the chapter titled “Enlightenment Legacies,” “which treats the in the fluence of the French and American experiences on subsequent revolutions from Russia to Africa only begins to explore the legacies left by the sister revolutions.” Library Journal reviewer Stephen Kent Shaw called the book an “insightful work.” Paul Gray said in Time that Sister Revolutions “shows not only how the French and American experiments developed, but also why their differing examples have continued to beguile ambitious leaders.”

Dunn co-authored The Three Roosevelts: Class Betrayal and Moral Leadership with Pulitzer prize winner James MacGregor Bums. The title discusses the political legacies of Theodore, Franklin, and Eleanor Roosevelt, and the influences that shaped the politics of the three figures. Bums and Dunn “do an excellent job of summarizing the political theology shared by these three Knickerbocker bluebloods,” commented a reviewer for Publishers Weekly. The contributor concluded that the authors “do great justice to three remarkable lives superbly lived.”

Achievements

• Dunn is a talented writer, whose works were bestsellers in the United States. Her works were highly praised by readers.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A Blueprint for War

    (In the cold winter months that followed Franklin Roosevel...)

    2018
  • Roosevelt's Purge

    (In his first term in office, Franklin Roosevelt helped pu...)

    2010
  • Jefferson's Second Revolution

    (In the election of 1800, Federalist incumbent John Adams,...)

    2004
  • The Deaths of Louis XVI

    (The public beheading of Louis XVI was a unique and troubl...)

    1994
  • 1940: FDR, Willkie, Lindbergh, Hitler-the Election amid the Storm

    (In 1940, against the explosive backdrop of the Nazi onsla...)

    2013
  • Sister Revolutions

    (What the two great modern revolutions can teach us about ...)

    1996
  • Something That Will Surprise the World

    (The Founding Fathers - Washington, Hamilton, Jefferson, A...)

    2006
  • Dominion of Memories

    (For decades, the Commonwealth of Virginia led the nation....)

    2007

Membership

• American Association of Teachers of French

• American Society of Eighteenth-Century Studies

• American Society of Nineteenth-Century Studies

References

• Contemporary Authors, Vol. 189
  2001