Richard Bell, Harvard University
Barra Dissertation Fellow
rjbell@fas.harvard.edu
"The Cultural Significance of Suicide in America"
'Joining us in the new year, Rick is completing his dissertation, 'The
Cultural Significance of Suicide in America, 1780-1840.' Arguing that
anxiety about both personal and political self-destruction drove public
discourse within the newly United States, his project examines how and
why suicide stood at the center of debates about the proper influence
that legal, cultural, and religious institutions should exert in
peoples’ lives in the early republic.'