James M. Banner, Jr.

James M. Banner, Jr., is a historian in Washington, D.C.  A graduate of Yale with a Ph.D. from Columbia, where he studied with Richard Hofstadter, Banner was a member of the history department at Princeton University from 1966 to 1980, which he left to found the American Association for the Advancement of the Humanities.  A former Guggenheim Fellow, fellow of the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard, member of the board of directors of the American Council of Learned Societies, and Fulbright Visiting Professor of American History at Charles University, Prague, he is the author of books and articles in American history, education, and public affairs and most recently, with Harold C. Cannon, of The Elements of Teaching and The Elements of Learning (Yale University Press, 1997 and 1999).  Currently at work on a book for aspiring historians, on a collection, co-edited with John R. Gillis, of essay-length memoirs entitled Becoming Historians (to be published by the University of Chicago Press), and on a play drawn from the correspondence between Thomas Jefferson and Abigail and John Adams, Banner is co-founder and co-director of the History News Service and a moving force behind efforts to establish the National History Center in Washington, D.C.