David Waldstreicher is a distinguished historian of early America and the nineteenth-century United States whose scholarship focuses on political and cultural history, slavery and antislavery, and the American Revolution. He is Distinguished Professor of History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
Waldstreicher is the author of several award-winning books, including The Odyssey of Phillis Wheatley: A Poet’s Journeys Through American Slavery and Independence, widely regarded as the most comprehensive biography of the pioneering African American poet. The book received the Society of American Historians’ Francis Parkman Prize and was praised by critics for placing Wheatley at the center of debates over the relationship between slavery and the American Revolution while reconstructing the intellectual world in which she lived.
His other major works include Slavery’s Constitution: From Revolution to Ratification (2009), Runaway America: Benjamin Franklin, Slavery, and the American Revolution (2004), and In the Midst of Perpetual Fetes: The Making of American Nationalism, 1776–1820 (1997). As an editor, he has contributed to numerous influential volumes, including Revolutions and Reconstructions: Black Politics in the Long Nineteenth Century (2020), the Library of America edition of The Diaries of John Quincy Adams (2017), Beyond the Founders: New Approaches to the Political History of the Early American Republic (2004), and The Struggle Against Slavery: A History in Documents (2001).
His scholarship has earned recognition from leading historical organizations, including the Society for Historians of the Early American Republic, the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture, the Southeastern American Society for Eighteenth-Century Studies, and the American Jewish Historical Society. In addition to his academic work, he has written for publications such as The Boston Review, The Atlantic, and The New York Times Book Review.
Before joining the Graduate Center, Waldstreicher taught at Temple University, the University of Notre Dame, Yale University, and Bennington College. In 2024, he delivered the Benjamin Franklin Distinguished Lectures at the University of Pennsylvania under the title “Three Ages of Slavery and the Future of U.S. History.”

This program is made possible by the generous support of The Presbyterian Association of Chautauqua Religious Lectureship Fund.