Professor Johnson regularly teaches graduate courses in the nineteenth-century United States, and is planning an Honors College seminar based in the writings of the Founding Fathers. His books include A Shopkeeper’s Millennium: Society and Revivals in Rochester, New York, 1815-1837 (Hill and Wang, 1978; 25th anniversary edition, 2004); (with Sean Wilentz), The Kingdom of Matthias: A Story of Sex and Salvation in 19th-Century America (Oxford, 1994); Sam Patch, the Famous Jumper (Hill and Wang, 2003); the early-republic chapters of John Murrin, et.al., Liberty, Equality, Power: A History of the American People (Wadsworth: 4th ed., 2004); the long essay on American history to 1877 in the Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (CD-ROM, 2000); and The Early American Republic, 1789-1829 (Oxford, 2005).

Current Activities

I am engaged in a long-term project on popular entertainments in British North America between 1780 and 1840. My book about Sam Patch was a first installment, and I am at work on two other short books: a narrative of the great horse race between the northern champion American Eclipse and the southern champion Sir Henry in 1823, and an account of the Michigan Descent, in which a ship full of live animals was sent over Niagara Falls before a huge crowd in 1827. Given time, I will write a long book about early American audiences and performance cultures, tentatively entitled The Beginnings of American Show Business.

To see Professor Johnson's CV, click here.