Cecelia M. Kenyon (1923 – January 1990) was an American

political scientist Political science is the scientific study of politics. It is a social science dealing with systems of governance and power, and the analysis of political activities, political thought, political behavior, and associated constitutions and la ...

. She was a professor at

Smith College Smith College is a private liberal arts women's college in Northampton, Massachusetts. It was chartered in 1871 by Sophia Smith and opened in 1875. It is the largest member of the historic Seven Sisters colleges, a group of elite women's c ...

from 1948 until 1984, where from 1969 onwards she was the Charles N. Clark Professor of Government. Her theses on the

American Revolution The American Revolution was an ideological and political revolution that occurred in British America between 1765 and 1791. The Americans in the Thirteen Colonies formed independent states that defeated the British in the American Revolu ...

and the early American

federalists The term ''federalist'' describes several political beliefs around the world. It may also refer to the concept of parties, whose members or supporters called themselves ''Federalists''. History Europe federation In Europe, proponents of d ...

emphasized the role of ideology in the creation of the American state and influenced historiography on the early United States.

Life and career

Kenyon was born in 1923 in

Gainesville, Georgia The city of Gainesville is the county seat of Hall County, Georgia, United States. As of the 2020 census, the city had a population of 42,296. Because of its large number of poultry processing plants, it is often called the "Poultry Capital of t ...

. She attended Oberlin College. She then studied at

Radcliffe College Radcliffe College was a women's liberal arts college in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and functioned as the female coordinate institution for the all-male Harvard College. Considered founded in 1879, it was one of the Seven Sisters colleges and he ...

, where she obtained a master's and a PhD. In 1948 Kenyon became a professor of government at Smith College. In 1969, she was named the Charles N. Clark Professor of Government. Kenyon was a scholar of the American Revolution and the roles of conservatism, radicalism, and federalism in early American history. In her 1955 essay "Men of little faith: the Anti-Federalists on the nature of representative government" in ''The William and Mary Quarterly'', Kenyon argued that the American Revolution was both essentially conservative and essentially radical, involving a rejection of some parts of the past while embracing others. This was an early study on the role of ideology in the American Revolution, which departed from previous assumptions that the Revolution had been mainly the result of material conditions. In 1966, she edited the volume ''The Antifederalists'' which collected writings opposed to the federalists around the time of the Revolution. Some of Kenyon's work was collected and analyzed in the 2003 University of Massachusetts Press book ''Men of little faith: Selected writings of Cecelia Kenyon''. The editors of the volume argued that Kenyon's work had had a major influence on subsequent historiography of the American Revolutionary era. Kenyon retired in 1984, and she died in

Northampton, Massachusetts The city of Northampton is the county seat of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of Northampton (including its outer villages, Florence and Leeds) was 29,571. Northampton is known as an a ...

in January 1990.

Selected works

*"Men of little faith: the Anti-Federalists on the nature of representative government", ''The William and Mary Quarterly'' (1955) *"Republicanism and Radicalism in the American Revolution: An Old-fashioned Interpretation", ''The William and Mary Quarterly'' (1962) *''The Antifederalists'', editor (1966)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kenyon, Cecelia 1923 births 1990 deaths American women political scientists American political scientists 20th-century American women writers Oberlin College alumni Radcliffe College alumni Smith College faculty American women academics 20th-century political scientists