Founding-era research and the social context of public institutions
At the McNeil Center for Early American Studies, Friends of the MCEAS Fellow Tingfeng Yan is uncovering the political ideas and practices that informed the creation of U.S. constitutionalism.
2 min. read
Tingfeng Yan is a Friends of the MCEAS Fellow at the McNeil Center for Early American Studies and a Ph.D. candidate in the Committee on Social Thought and the Department of History at the University of Chicago. Yan’s research specializes in the history of the American Revolution, constitutionalism, and administration. He examines different ways in which Founding-era Americans related to state and federal constitutions and the roles of the government under the constitutions.
Tingfeng Yan is a Friends of the MCEAS Fellow at the McNeil Center.
(Image: Courtesy of The McNeil Center Center for Early American Studies)
“I am interested in understanding American constitutionalism, which is a common reference point in discussions on American politics today,” says Yan. “In political discourses, people often refer to the Founders’ (or the Founding generation’s) visions as embodied in the Constitution.”
At the McNeil Center, Yan uses historical research to examine the political ideas and practices that informed the creation of U.S. constitutionalism. “My engagement with early U.S. history relates to my interest in understanding American political culture today.”
“My dissertation topic concerns laws, institutions, and their operation in practice. Having lived in a variety of countries, I have always been interested in the relationships between public institutions and their social contexts. There is often an air of universalism about public institutions,” Yan says. However, he adds, “We know that, in fact, the roles that institutions play and how they are socially coded can be quite different across contexts.”
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