James T. Patterson (historian)

James T. Patterson (born January 1, 1935 in Connecticut) is an American historian, who was the Ford Foundation Professor of History emeritus at Brown University for 30 years. He was educated at Harvard University. His research interests include political history, legal history, and social history, as well as the history of medicine, race relations, and education. In 1981-1982 he was the Harold Vyvyan Harmsworth Professor of American History at Oxford University.

Patterson was born and raised in Connecticut, son of J. Tyler Patterson, a member of the Connecticut State House of Representatives who went on to serve as its speaker.”

Patterson attended the Hotchkiss School before enrolling at Williams College, where he earned a B.A. in 1957. He then served for 6 months in the U.S. Army before taking a job at the Hartford Courant, where, he says, “I was responsible for writing 25 inches of news every day, and I learned to write quickly, using strong verbs, because I knew that the audience was made up of American adults at the breakfast table. This developed my style of writing, which seeks to be strongly narrative.”

In fall of 1960 Patterson entered Harvard University, earning an M.A. in 1961 and a Ph.D. in history in 1964. He started his teaching career at Indiana University, moving to Brown University in 1972 until his retirement in 2002.

His first three books (1967-1972) were “straightforward political history. I had always been very interested in politics before moving to academia.” For this work Patterson received the Frederick Jackson Turner Award from the Organization of American Historians (1966), two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was also the recipient of an Indiana University Teaching Award and the Ohioana Award, a book prize for his 1972 volume on Taft.

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