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Thomas Balcerski

Associate Professor
History
Biography

Thomas Balcerski is Professor of History at Eastern Connecticut State University and Director of the Center for Connecticut Studies. A historian of American politics, he teaches courses on Connecticut history, New England history, U.S. Presidents and First Ladies, and American society and culture. He is the author of Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King (Oxford University Press, 2019). His current project looks at the long history of the Democratic Party, America’s oldest partisan organization.

Since 2024, he has served as Editor of Connecticut History Review, the only academic, peer-reviewed, journal devoted to the history of the Nutmeg State. In addition, he serves on the Board of Trustees of Connecticut Explored, an independent non-profit history magazine that tells the stories that have shaped Connecticut’s history, and on the Editorial Board of ConnecticutHistory.org, state public history resource written for a diverse set of readers, ranging from students to educators to history enthusiasts. He is active as a member of the Grant Application Review Committee for Connecticut Humanities, a member of the Connecticut Coalition for History, a judge for Connecticut History Day, and an organizer of the Connecticut State University Making History Conference.

Thomas holds a bachelor’s degree from Cornell University, a master’s degree from SUNY Stony Brook, and a Ph.D. from Cornell University. During the 2022-2023 academic year, he held the Ray Allen Billington Visiting Professorship in U.S. History and the Americas at Occidental College and was a long-term fellow at the Huntington Library.

Research Interests
  • Connecticut and New England History
  • U.S. Presidents and First Ladies
  • American Political History
Of Note

Dr. Balcerski was featured in a major documentary about Abraham Lincoln; read more at Eastern News.

Teaching Interests
  • Connecticut History
  • New England History
  • U.S. Presidential History
  • American Society and Popular Culture
Publications

Book:

Bosom Friends: The Intimate World of James Buchanan and William Rufus King. New York: Oxford University Press, 2019.

Articles:

“First Ladies in Wartime,” in The Cambridge Companion to First Ladies. Eds. Lisa Burns and Terri Finneman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2025. 70-97.

“Before the White House: New York City’s Capital Legacy.” White House History Quarterly 69 (Spring 2023), 26-37.

“‘The Little Spark of Manhood I Have Left’: Governor Thomas Melville and Aged Seamen of Sailors’ Snug Harbor.” New York History Journal 102, no. 1 (Summer 2021): 82-105.

“‘A General Concurrence in the Propriety of the Repeal’: Male Friendship, Party, and Section in the Kansas-Nebraska Bill,” Civil War History 65, no. 2 (June 2019): 157-183.

“The Bachelor’s Mess: James Buchanan and the Domestic Politics of Doughfacery in Jacksonian America,” in The Worlds of James Buchanan and Thaddeus Stevens: Place, Personality, and Politics in the Civil War Era, eds. Michael J. Birkner, John Quist, and Randall Miller (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 2019): 31-61.

“‘A Work of Friendship’: Nathaniel Hawthorne, Franklin Pierce, and the Politics of Enmity in the Civil War Era,” Journal of Social History 50, no. 4 (Summer 2017): 655-79.

“Beards, Bachelors, and Brides: The Surprisingly Spicy Politics of the Presidential Election of 1856,” Common-place: The Journal of Early American Life 16, no. 4 (Summer 2016)

Awards

Board of Regents Faculty Research Award for Connecticut State University, 2021

Mentor Award for Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity, 2021

History Department

Center for Connecticut Studies

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