News & Events

Author of “Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers” to Speak at UNC Asheville

February 2, 2012

Brooke Allen, author of “Moral Minority: Our Skeptical Founding Fathers” (2006, Ivan R. Dee), will lecture about the religious beliefs (or lack thereof) among our nation’s founders. Her talk is free and open to the public, and begins at 7 p.m. Monday, Feb. 13, in UNC Asheville’s Humanities Lecture Hall.

Allen’s study focused on the religious and intellectual lives of six of the founding fathers – Washington, Franklin, Adams, Jefferson, Madison and Hamilton – and concludes that that the United States was founded not on Christian principles, but on Enlightenment ideas.

Allen teaches literature at Bennington College. Her most recent book is “The Other Side of the Mirror: An American Travels Through Syria” (2011, Paul Dry Books). She is also the author of two collections of literary essays. Her essays and reviews have appeared in the Atlantic, the New York Times Book Review, The Wall Street Journal, and many other periodicals. She holds master’s degrees from the Université de Paris-Sorbonne and from Columbia University, where she also earned a Ph. D. in English literature.

Allen’s lecture is sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities Distinguished Teaching Professorship at UNC Asheville. For more information, contact Merritt Moseley, professor of Literature, at 828.251.6583.