Dr Mark Power Smith

Mark Power Smith is a Departmental Lecturer in Nineteenth-Century United States History at St Peter's. He is interested in the political and intellectual history of the nineteenth-century United States, particularly the development of nationalism before the Civil War. His first book focuses on the role of "Young America" in antebellum political culture - a nationalist movement that nevertheless undermined political compromise through an aggressive program of territorial expansion, cultural autonomy and racial exclusion.

Power Smith has published articles on spiritualism as an element of urban popular culture and the construction of nationalism through the lens of a diplomatic dispute known as the Koszta Affair (1853). He is currently working on a second book project focusing on the ways in which Americans envisioned the end of the "Age of Revolutions" after the Civil War, as well as an article exploring antebellum ideas about household government through the lens of two extremely high-profile marital affairs. He has published a short biography of Abraham Lincoln with Connell Guides, and previously taught at Arizona State University in the School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies.

Selected publications

Young America: The Transformation of Nationalism before the Civil War (University of Virginia Press, Summer 2022)

"The Young America movement, the Koszta Affair of 1853 and the construction of nationalism before the Civil War” Journal of the Early Republic, Vol. 41, (Spring 2021).

"Séances in the City: The ‘Operational Aesthetic’ and ‘Modern Spiritualism’ in the popular culture of New York City, 1865-1870” American Nineteenth Century History, Vol. 17, (January 2017).

"The Young America Movement and The Crisis of Household Politics,” The Panorama: Expansive Views from the Journal of the Early Republic, (July 2021).

The Connell Short Guide to President Lincoln (September 2017).