Vienna250 / Bards Alley Author Series

Join Vienna250, Bards Alley, and Sunrise Senior Living of Vienna on August 19, 2026, at 2pm for a free talk with historian George Oberle. Mr. Oberle will be discussing his new book, “Creating an Informed Citizenry: Knowledge and Democracy in the Early American Republic” which examines the early debates in the United States over how best to educate the constituents of the new nation.

When the founding fathers of the United States inaugurated a system of government that was unprecedented in the modern world, they knew that a functioning democracy required an educated electorate capable of making rational decisions.   Many of the founders, including George Washington, initially favored the creation of a centralized national university to educate Americans from all backgrounds. Over the first half of the 19th century, this proposal died out, and ultimately morphed into the founding of an expert-run national repository of knowledge known as the Smithsonian Institution. Oberle’s insightful analysis of the debate in our nascent country over the role of public higher education offers food for thought as we continue to grapple with a rapidly evolving media landscape amid contested meanings of knowledge, expertise and the obligations of citizenship.

George Oberle is History Librarian at George Mason University, where he has held librarian faculty roles since 2004. Mr. Oberle also teaches as an Associate (Term) Professor in the university’s Department of History and Art History, and he co-founded and serves as director the Center for Mason Legacies, an interdisciplinary research center chartered by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences in collaboration with University Libraries. 

Books will be available for purchase, and a book signing will follow the program.  

Location: Sunrise Senior Living of Vienna, 374 Maple Ave. W, Vienna
Parking: Limited free parking is available underneath the building