Jay Sexton

Jay Sexton is the Rich and Nancy Kinder Chair of Constitutional Democracy at the University of Missouri, as well as emeritus fellow of Corpus Christi College and distinguished fellow of the RAI.

Sexton specializes in the political and economic history of the nineteenth century, especially the era of the American Civil War. His research situates the United States in its international context, particularly as it related to the dominant global structure of the era, the British Empire. He spends much of his time working with colleagues from around the world on collaborative projects and multi-author volumes.

A former deputy director and director of the RAI, look for Sexton when he returns to Oxford each March and July with Atlantic history students from Missouri.

Select publications

• The Cambridge History of America and the World, Volume 2, co-edited with Kristin Hoganson (2021).
• Crossing Empires: Taking U.S. History into Transimperial Terrain, co-edited with Kristin Hoganson (2020).
• A Nation Forged by Crisis: A New American History (2018).
• Empire’s Twin: U.S. Anti-Imperialism from the Founding Era to the Age of Terrorism, co-edited with Ian Tyrrell (2015).
• The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America (2011).
• The Global Lincoln, co-edited with Richard Carwardine (2011).
• Debtor Diplomacy: Finance and American Foreign Relations in the Civil War Era, 1837-1873 (2005).