Alexis de Tocqueville: An International Conference Commemorating the Bicentennial of His Birth

The Beinecke Library at Yale University, in collaboration with the Tocqueville Society and with the support from the Florence J. Gould Foundation, is hosting a two-day international conference commemorating the bicentennial of Alexis de Tocqueville's birth. Well-known scholars drawn from a variety of disciplines will reflect on issues such as Tocqueville in the French intellectual tradition, his place as a comparativist political analyst, and his anticipations of contemporary political discourse. Professor Robert Dahl of the Political Science Department at Yale University will give the keynote address.

A Beinecke Library exhibition on Alexis de Tocqueville, Gustave de Beaumont, and the Challenge of Democracy, drawn from the rich Beinecke Tocqueville collections, will accompany the conference.

The conference is free and open to the public, but advance registration is requested.

Friday, September 30th - Beinecke Library

8:30 a.m. Coffee, tea, pastries

9:00 - 10:30 a.m., Panel 1, Chair: Jennifer Pitts, Princeton University

• Tocqueville's Journey Revisited: What Was Striking and New in America
  James Schleifer, College of New Rochelle
• The Reception of Tocqueville's Work in Twentieth-Century Italian Intellectual and Political Circles
  Fréderic Attal, Université d’Orléans
  Commentator: Alan Kahan, Florida International University

10:30 - 11:00 a.m. Coffee Break

11:00 - 12:30 p.m., Panel 2, Chair: Bryan Garsten, Yale University

• The Rhetoric of Hope and Fear in Tocqueville's Democracy
  Arthur Goldhammer, Center for European Studies, Harvard University
• Tocqueville as a Writer
  Laurence Guellec, Université de Poitiers
• Commentator: Steven Smith, Yale University

2:00 - 3:30 p.m., Panel 3, Chair: Gerard Gengembre, University of Caen

• Alexis de Tocqueville and John Stuart Mill
  Frank Turner, Yale University
• Tocqueville, Mill, and the American Whigs
  James Kloppenberg, Harvard University
• Commentator: Seymour Drescher, University of Pittsburgh

4:00 p.m. Keynote Address by Robert Dahl, Yale University

Political Equality in America: Tocqueville and Today

Followed by general reception and opening of exhibition:
Alexis de Tocqueville, Gustave de Beaumont, and the Challenge of Nineteenth-Century Democracy

Saturday, October 1st - Beinecke Library

8:45 a.m. Coffee, tea, pastries

9:15 - 10:45 a.m., Panel 4, Chair: Olivier Zunz, University of Virginia

• Tocqueville and Abolition: Slaves, Subjects, Souls, Citizens
  Cheryl Welch, Simmons College
• Democracy as a Counter-Revolutionary Strategy in Tocqueville
  Stephen Holmes, New York University
• Commentator: Robert Gannett, Independent Scholar

10:45 - 11:15 a.m. Coffee Break

11:15 - 12:45 p.m., Panel 5, Chair: Theodore Caplow, Tocqueville Society

• Tocqueville's Blind Spot: Political Contestations under the Old Regime
  Keith Baker, Stanford University
• Tocqueville European: France and Germany
  Françoise Mélonio, Université de Paris-IV-Sorbonne
• La démocratie au risque de son armée - Talk to be given in French
  Jean-Louis Benoit, Lycée de Saint Lô (Classes préparatoires aux grandes écoles)
  Commentator: Simon Langlois, University of Laval