“Call it cliche,” Sophia Rosenfeld told students as she opened the Levinson History Lecture Friday, Jan. 9, “but choice is what freedom feels like.”

Rosenfeld, the Walter H. Annenberg Professor of History and former chair of the Department of History at the University of Pennsylvania, delivered her talk to a packed Engelhard Hall. Rosenfeld, who is, as St. Andrew’s History Department Chair Matt Edmonds noted, “a historian of the taken-for-granted,” spoke on the age of choice in America. Rosenfeld’s recent book, The Age of Choice: A History of Freedom in Modern Life—a New York Times Notable Book of 2025 and Cundill History Prize finalist—focuses, as the lecture did, on the intricacies at the intersection of freedom and choice, their differences, and their impact on society.

Rosenfeld laid out how choice and the act of choosing has taken over modern society. “Choice now exists as a form of freedom almost anywhere that would call itself a human rights or democratic culture,” Rosenfeld said, adding that choice is pertinent “anywhere we could talk about something like consumer culture or capitalism.” That’s because, Rosenfeld argued, “it allows each of us to think of ourselves as a chooser, the kind of person who's independent, autonomous, and generally adult enough to make determinations for themselves.”

However, Rosenfeld was not interested in just the broader psycho-and-physiological boost one gets from choice. Rather, she is interested in why as citizens, we take it for granted. She acknowledged that in 2026—the year that will see America’s 250th birthday—“it doesn’t seem like a bad idea to start thinking about … what freedom actually is.”

“Freedom itself is not a static thing,” she said, as a larger-than-life image of Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, the 1776 pamphlet Paine wrote arguing for American independence, appeared on the screen behind her. “Freedom has a history,” she said. “Freedom hasn’t always been practiced by the same people, or thought of in the same way.”

This non-linear idea of a history of freedom, Rosenfeld argued, is hard to understand without first looking into the history of choice. Paine’s pamphlet, Rosenfeld said, is the first of many examples of choice and freedoms co-mingling in American history. “Choice isn’t a big theme, but there’s a little bit of poetry,” she said before quoting Paine: “Man knows no master, save creating heaven, or those whom choice and common good ordain.” The quote, she said, defines freedom as choice. She said this notion carried over to the Declaration of Independence. “​​Nothing gets said about choice, but there's a suggestion here again of something about self-determination” in connection to freedom, Rosenfeld offered.

After she detailed how choice impacts not just the large freedoms in our lives, like the right to vote, practice religion, and govern ourselves, she dove into smaller instances—shopping, cooking, and romantic life.

She closed with a rousing call to the Saints in attendance.

“History, freedom, and choice will be up to your generation,” she said.  “Redefine once again what freedom should look like, drawing on 1776, but breaking with it, too.”

David N. Levinson ’53 and his family endowed the Levinson History Lecture series so St. Andrew’s students could engage with experts in history, politics, economics, or related social-science fields.