The Strange Genius of Mr. O: The World of the United States’ First Forgotten Celebrity

On July 15, 2021, historian Carolyn Eastman delivered a Banner Lecture examining the career of James Ogilvie, a now-forgotten celebrity of the very early nineteenth century, and what it tells us about the intersection of political culture and celebrity—at a moment when the United States was in the midst of invention.

Carolyn Eastman is an associate professor of history at Virginia Commonwealth University and a Distinguished Lecturer for the Organization of American Historians. She specializes in early America with special interest in eighteenth and nineteenth-century political culture, the media, and gender. She is the author of the prizewinning A Nation of Speechifiers: Making an American Public after the Revolution and The Strange Genius of Mr. O: The World of the United States’ First Forgotten Celebrity.

The content and opinions expressed in these presentations are solely those of the speaker and not necessarily of the Virginia Museum of History & Culture.

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