Dr Nicholas Cole: List of publications

This paper describes a new approach to the presentation of records relating to formal negotiations and the texts that they create. It describes the architecture of a model, platform, and web interface (https://www.quillproject.net) that can be used by domain experts to convert the records typical of formal negotiations into a model of decision-making (with minimal training). This model has implications for both research and teaching, by allowing for better qualitative and quantitative analysis of negotiations. The platform emphasizes the reconstruction as closely as possible of the context within which proposals and decisions are made. The usability and benefits of a generic platform are illustrated by a presentation of the records relating to the 1787 Constitutional Convention that wrote the Constitution of the USA.

On the shore where the colony of Virginia had its first beginnings stands a monument to the tenacity and achievements of those early British settlers. Yet the pagan obelisk and Roman wreaths with which their seventeenth-century society is symbolized and celebrated reflect not their own understanding and representations of their community, but a vocabulary associated with the wider American achievement, and in particular the politics and political theory that in the late eighteenth century produced the modern American republic. Across the continent of America and around the Atlantic world, a similar classical vocabulary symbolizes legitimacy, civilization, learning and achievement. In the federal and state capitals of the United States, neo-classical buildings house the various branches of government, a connection between the ancient and modern world for which Thomas Jefferson, through his deliberate choice of the temple at Nîmes as the model for the post-Independence Virginian Capitol building, is in part responsible. Familiarity has perhaps dulled modern observers to some of the original impact of such buildings, but their original and striking impression can be glimpsed in the art of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. A watercolour by Benjamin Henry Latrobe, ‘View of the City of Richmond From the Bank of the James River’ painted in 1798 and now in the possession of the Maryland Historical Society, shows the newly constructed, unmistakably classical, capitol building rising above the modestly constructed houses of contemporary Richmond. Latrobe would go on to work on many important public buildings in America, not least of which is the national Capitol Building in Washington D.C., and he was important in promoting a style of Greek Revival architecture that has proved enduring and in uential.

Thomas Jefferson read Latin and Greek authors throughout his life and wrote movingly about his love of the ancient texts, which he thought should be at the core of America's curriculum. Yet at the same time, Jefferson warned his countrymen not to look to the ancient world for modern lessons and deplored many of the ways his peers used classical authors to address contemporary questions. As a result, the contribution of the ancient world to the thought of America's most classically educated Founding Father remains difficult to assess.This volume brings together historians of political thought with classicists and historians of art and culture to find new approaches to the difficult questions raised by America's classical heritage. The essays explore the classical contribution to different aspects of Jefferson's thought and taste, as well as examining the significance of the ancient world to America in a broader historical context. The diverse interests and methodologies of the contributors suggest new ways of approaching one of the most prominent and contested of the traditions that helped create America's revolutionary republicanism. © 2011 by the Rector and Visitors of the University of Virginia. All rights reserved.