Q&A with Daniel Graves PhD ’26

With the United States’ 250th anniversary on the horizon, many Americans are reflecting on the nation’s past. Early in his graduate studies, Daniel Graves PhD ’26 (Classics and History) became intrigued by the role of the classics in shaping early national America. In his dissertation, Graves shows how a late seventeenth century debate within the French Academy—now known as the Quarrel of the Ancients and the Moderns—became the animating force of political culture and intellectual life in the early American republic. He narrates the American version of this debate through the eyes of Thomas Jefferson, who was a champion of the Moderns and a connoisseur of the Ancients.

On May 17, his work was honored at the Graduate School’s Convocation Ceremony with the university’s John Addison Porter Prize, considered to be one of the university’s most prestigious awards.

We sat down with Graves to learn more about his research process and his time at Yale. 
 

Tell us a little more about your dissertation topic. It’s very timely for the 250th anniversary of the United States. 

Initially, I planned to write my dissertation on the classics in early America. And what struck me as interesting is that there was this debate in the French Academy at the end of the 17th century about who was better: the European Moderns or the Ancient Greeks and the Romans. They were asking this question about everything—aesthetics, literature, the sciences—really big-picture questions. Dan Edelstein, a brilliant Stanford University historian who has written extensively on the Enlightenment, had suggested that this debate within the French Academy was the basis of the entire Enlightenment intellectual movement in Europe. And I thought, well, this is really interesting, why not apply this to the American context?

Thomas Jefferson was such a perfect exemplar because we have so much of his writing, so much of his thought in the form of letters and speeches and treatises and so forth. He was one of the most prominent figures in the founding period. So, I looked at Jefferson's contributions to this debate, and it became the overarching framing device for the entire project.

How did Jefferson incorporate both philosophies into his thinking?

At the outset of the project, I wanted to say that Jefferson was a Modern, pure and simple, that he fell on the Modern side of the debate because he believed in the possibility of indefinite progress. This is characteristic of the Modern position in the debate between Ancients and Moderns. But it is absolutely true that he had admiration for classical antiquity; if you look at his house, Monticello, it's designed on classical models. If you look at the University of Virginia, which is referred to as ‘Mr. Jefferson's University’ in some circles, it’s also designed on classical models. So, there's a mix of ancient and modern, and that's why my dissertation title is ‘Thomas Jefferson:, Ancient and Modern.’ It's actually more complicated than it might at first appear.

Is ‘indefinite progress’ the idea that we're always getting better as a people or a society?

Or, that we can. That it is indeed possible to make progress, in all fields, like moral progress, scientific progress, aesthetic progress. And at the time, of course, that was a controversial position, and maybe it still is a controversial position, especially in the moral and religious context.

What were some of your key findings?

I think the framing device that I've come up with, the Ancients vs. Moderns, is relatively new in the field of early American history. I am principally a classicist, so my work reflects what a classicist sees when he looks at early America. And I tried to articulate that in the dissertation. So that was my key finding.

And then also the idea of the possibility of indefinite progress as being the linchpin of Jeffersonian ideology. I don't think anyone has put the point that strongly before, in even scholarship on Jefferson, as really the linchpin of his ideology and his political movement.

Jefferson’s personal history as a slave owner is well known. How did you approach that aspect of his life in your work?

The second chapter of my dissertation is about race and slavery. That’s where the complication of the Ancients and Moderns theme comes in. Jefferson always tried to combine the best insights of ancient and modern thinkers. But this method failed him on the topics of race and slavery.

And I show how that's the case by comparing the way that he tried to synthesize ancient Greek and Roman views on race and natural history, and then his contemporaries—mostly Scottish and French philosophers’ views on the same issues—and he himself was just never able to come up with a coherent ideology on this front. And it caused problems for his political project, as you might imagine.

He was elected president, which many would consider a success. What political problems did he have, in your view?

Well, he was hoping that the institution of slavery could be abolished within his lifetime. He advocated for abolition when he was young. But as he got older, as he progressed in his political career, I think his realism set in and his understanding of his Southern contemporaries—that they're just not going to move on this topic. And he just became more and more resigned to the fact that his own generation was not going to be the one that would abolish the institution of slavery – it would have to be a subsequent generation. So, I think that's one area in which his own political career was unsuccessful.

How did you first become interested in this topic more broadly?

It's been many years, but I can say that it actually happened at the Yale Graduate School. When I was an undergraduate, I studied classics and ancient history. When I came to Yale, my intention was to study the later Roman Empire. My advisor, Noel Lenski, is a specialist in the later Roman Empire. But I took a seminar in early national America with Yale Professor Joanne Freeman, which I thought was just going to fulfill one of my requirements for the degree, but it completely changed my scholarly trajectory. It was in that class that I had the first opportunity to really think seriously about the role of the classics in shaping early national America, and of course, subsequent American history. I remember writing my paper about Alexander Hamilton at the time, so it was not Jefferson-based. But it was from that class that I started thinking about these themes more broadly.

Did you have close mentors at Yale?

Yes. Noel Lenski was with me from the very beginning. What I admire about him is that he is a specialist in the later Roman Empire. His work is so different from mine. And yet, when I told him that I wanted to make a really big change from studying late Rome to early America, he said, ‘I'm in.’ He just trusted my judgment and continued to serve as my adviser. I think that shows intellectual range and trust in his students to be able to pull that off.

Because my dissertation is interdisciplinary, I had readers from multiple fields. One of my other readers, Brad Inwood, is a philosophy and classics professor who is well known for his work on the Stoics. He was really interested in the philosophical themes of my work, and he gave me helpful suggestions. My early America representative was Mark Peterson from the history department. They come at my topic from very different perspectives, and I think that helped inform the final product.

Did you have opportunities to share your research with broader audiences?

Yes, one of my most memorable experiences was a month-long fellowship at Monticello, Jefferson’s home. The International Center for Jefferson Studies brings scholars of early America to present talks. When I gave my talk there in 2019, there were professors from UVA in the room, mostly history, but there were also members of the general public. I was talking about Jefferson’s views on race and slavery. That’s a perennially interesting topic to many people and it led to some really interesting discussions. That informed how I wrote that second chapter. It also gave me practice communicating with audiences that were not scholars.

During the course of my research, as I went from one archive to another across the country, I spoke to a number of wonderful librarians. I came to love librarians and archivists through this process, because they are doing the Lord's work and they're doing it quietly. And in many cases, they have more knowledge and expertise than even some faculty in certain areas. I greatly benefited from their perspectives, because part of my dissertation is the history of the book. There are just tons of pictures I have of Jefferson's books, where he's written in the margins of his classical texts. So that was really useful for me.

Where’s home for you?

I am from a very, very small town in central Texas called Granger, about a half an hour north of Austin. I stayed relatively close to home for college—Rice University in Houston, about three hours away.

What are your plans after Yale?

Currently I’m finishing up my law degree at the University of Chicago. I had pretty much finished up my PhD dissertation by the time I came here, but I only submitted it recently. So, I'm getting both my degrees around the same time. I started at Yale in 2015, and my graduate studies were interrupted by COVID and then by my decision to come to law school, so it has been a long journey. In the fall, I will begin working as an attorney in the U.S. Department of Justice’s Federal Programs Branch.

Any final thoughts?

I’m thrilled about being selected for the Porter Prize because one of the things that I try to do in all my writing, whether it's scholarly or legal, is to make my work accessible to a general audience. So, I was really pleased that I was able to achieve readability. I’ve found that the clearest and most persuasive writing is actually the most difficult to produce.

Career-wise, I may or may not come back to academia—that's a decision that I will have to make later. But it seems like now is the best time ever for new perspectives, new voices, new ideas in the academy. I feel like we're at kind of a crossroads in many areas of American life, so it’s a very exciting time for scholarship.