My works

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Armed Citizens: The Road from Ancient Rome to the Second Amendment​

In Armed Citizens, Noah Shusterman explains for a general reader what eighteenth-century militias were and why the authors of the Constitution believed them to be necessary to the security of a free state. Suggesting that the question was never whether there was a right to bear arms, but rather, who had the right to bear arms, Shusterman begins with the lessons that the founding generation took from the history of Ancient Rome and Machiavelli’s reinterpretation of those myths during the Renaissance. He then turns to the rise of France’s professional army during seventeenth-century Europe and the fear that it inspired in England. Shusterman shows how this fear led British writers to begin praising citizens’ militias, at the same time that colonial America had come to rely on those militias as a means of defense and as a system to police enslaved peoples. Thus the start of the Revolution allowed Americans to portray their struggle as a war of citizens against professional soldiers, leading the authors of the Constitution to place their trust in citizen soldiers and a “well-regulated militia,” an idea that persists to this day.

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Religion and the Politics of Time: Holidays in France from Louis XIV through Napoleon

A study of how French Revolutionary and Napoleonic state-building used techniques borrowed from the Catholic Church.

The French Revolution: Faith, Desire, and Politics

A history of the French Revolution aimed at undergraduates, highlighting the importance of gender and religion.

Review on "The French Revolution: Faith, Desire, and Politics"

“A lively and well-written survey of the French Revolution that would have a lot to offer students starting their study of this major topic.”

Nigel Aston, University of Leicester

Review on "Religion and the Politics of Time: Holidays in France from Louis XIV through Napoleon"

“Clear and largely Jargon-Free.”

William Doyle, University of Bristol

My Podcasts

About militias in the eighteenth century, and my book, Armed Citizens.

We discuss my book Armed Citizens, and the larger question of militias and citizen-soldiers – with some looks at the past and some at the present. In 2 parts.

“Maintaining a Research Identity.” 2016.

About my 2nd book, “The French Revolution: Faith, Desire, and Politics.” 2014

My Popular Press/ Blogs

In Second Thoughts: Duke Center for Firearms Law Blog, 2020.

Washington Post, Made by History, 2018.

Chronicle of Higher Education, 2013.

Chronicle of Higher Eductation, 2007.