Roosevelt Montás
Jack Miller Center Academic Council Member and
Founding Civics Initiative Faculty
John and Margaret Bard Professor in Liberal Education and Civic Life, Bard College
Roosevelt Montás is the John and Margaret Bard Professor in Liberal Education and Civic Life at Bard College. He holds an A.B. (1995), an M.A. (1996), and a Ph.D. (2004) in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. He was Director of the Center for the Core Curriculum at Columbia College from 2008 to 2018.
Roosevelt specializes in Antebellum American literature and culture, with a particular interest in American citizenship. His dissertation, Rethinking America: Abolitionism and the Antebellum Transformation of the Discourse of National Identity, won Columbia University’s 2004 Bancroft Award. In 2000, he received the Presidential Award for Outstanding Teaching by a Graduate Student.
Roosevelt served as director of Columbia’s Center for the Core Curriculum for ten years, and started a Great Books program for low-income high school students who aspire to be the first in their families to attend college. He speaks and writes on the history, meaning, and future of liberal education and is author of Rescuing Socrates: How the Great Books Changed My Life and Why They Matter for a New Generation (Princeton University Press, 2021).
He specializes in American political thought and literature is also author of Becoming America: Four Documents That Shaped a Nation (forthcoming, Princeton University Press, 2026) and co-editor of The Princeton Readings American Political Thought (forthcoming, Princeton University Press, 2026).
Research interests:
Antebellum American literature and culture
Moral and political thought
