Center for the Teaching of America’s Western Foundations Hosts Constitution Day Featuring Noted Madison Scholar Sheehan

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MACON — Noted James Madison scholar Dr. Colleen Sheehan of Villanova University will deliver the undergraduate Constitution Day Lecture at Mercer University on Monday at 7:30 p.m. in Fickling Hall of the McCorkle Music Building. Mercer’s Center for the Teaching of America’s Western Foundations is hosting the lecture, titled “James Madison on Citizenship and Statesmanship,” which is sponsored by the Jack Miller Center.

“Sheehan’s talk will likely challenge the widely held view that Madison thought institutional checks and balances were alone sufficient to produce free government,” said Dr. Will Jordan, center co-director and associate professor and chair of the Political Science Department. “Her view of Madison pays much more attention to the character he thought necessary among citizens and statesmen to secure good government.”

Dr. Sheehan is an associate professor of political science at Villanova and director of the Matthew J. Ryan Center for Free Institutions and the Public Good. Her discussion will be drawn from her successful 2009 book, James Madison and the Spirit of Republican Self-Government. Sheehan has written numerous scholarly articles on topics from the American founding to the novels of Jane Austen.  She currently serves on the council of advisers for the McKenna School of Business, Economics and Government at St. Vincent College, James Madison Society, National Association of Scholars, among others. She served as a visiting associate professor at Princeton University in 2006. Sheehan received her Bachelor of Arts in political science at Eisenhower College and both her Master of Arts in government and Ph.D. in political philosophy and American government from Claremont Graduate School.
 
About Mercer University
Founded in 1833, Mercer University is a dynamic and comprehensive center of undergraduate, graduate and professional education. The University enrolls more than 8,300 students in 11 schools and colleges – liberal arts, law, pharmacy, medicine, business, engineering, education, theology, music, nursing and continuing and professional studies – on campuses in Macon, Atlanta and Savannah – and four regional academic centers across the state. The Mercer Health Sciences Center launched July 1, 2012, and includes the University’s medical, nursing and pharmacy schools and will add a fourth college – the College of Health Professions – on July 1, 2013. Mercer is affiliated with four teaching hospitals — Memorial University Medical Center in Savannah, the Medical Center of Central Georgia in Macon, and The Medical Center and St. Francis Hospital in Columbus. The University also has educational partnerships with Warner Robins Air Logistics Center in Warner Robins and Piedmont Healthcare in Atlanta. It operates an academic press and a performing arts center in Macon and an engineering research center in Warner Robins. Mercer is the only private university in Georgia to field an NCAA Division I athletic program. www.mercer.edu
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