Peculiar Satisfaction
Book • 2025
Fordham UP, 2025) examines how the ideals and contradictions of the nation’s founding live on in libraries, archives, and museums.
Thomas Jefferson championed an informed citizenry as essential to democracy, yet the systems he built to organize knowledge reinforced racial and ideological hierarchies that persist today.
Melissa Adler explores Jefferson’s lasting influence on public institutions, from his personal library, which became the foundation of the Library of Congress, to his archival practices in government record-keeping and his museum at Monticello as a site of colonial knowledge production.
Through an interdisciplinary lens, she reveals how his methods of classification and preservation shaped national memory and democratic participation.
Thomas Jefferson championed an informed citizenry as essential to democracy, yet the systems he built to organize knowledge reinforced racial and ideological hierarchies that persist today.
Melissa Adler explores Jefferson’s lasting influence on public institutions, from his personal library, which became the foundation of the Library of Congress, to his archival practices in government record-keeping and his museum at Monticello as a site of colonial knowledge production.
Through an interdisciplinary lens, she reveals how his methods of classification and preservation shaped national memory and democratic participation.
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Melissa Adler
Melissa Adler, "Peculiar Satisfaction: Thomas Jefferson and the Mastery of Subjects" (Fordham UP, 2025)
