Given the country’s current hostile political climate, it can feel like American politics is polarized to a historic degree. This week, the Providence College Podcast asks Darra Mulderry, Ph.D. — a scholar of political and intellectual history — about the history of political division in the United States. How do our times stack up compared to the years preceding the Civil War, the tumultuous Vietnam years, or other periods of intense division? What is different in our politics now compared to then? What can political leaders and voters learn from history about political conflict and reconciliation?

Mulderry is director of national and international fellowships and scholarships and associate director of the Center for Engaged Learning. She is also a visiting professor in the Department of History.

NOTE: this episode was recorded before the convening of the 118th Congress and lengthy process to elect a speaker of the House of Representatives.

Mulderry mentions Jeffrey L. Pasley’s The Tyranny of Printers, a historical monograph on newspapers in the early republic, available from the University of Virginia Press as well as Providence College’s Phillips Memorial Library.

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