Supporting scholarship and promoting popular understanding of the American Revolution is central to the work of the American Revolution Institute. The Institute welcomes distinguished scholars and authors to share their insights and discuss their latest research with the public at Anderson House through lectures, author's talks and panel discussions. The Institute also hosts a variety of other historical programs throughout the year, including our Lunch Bite object talks, battlefield tours, special Anderson House tour programs and other events. Many of the events we offer are free.
October 2022
Panel Discussion – Women at War: Confronting Challenges in the American Revolution
The Revolutionary War dramatically affected the speed and nature of broader social, cultural and political changes, including shaping the place and roles of women in society. Whether loyalist or patriot, indigenous or immigrant, enslaved or slave-owning, going willingly into a battle or responding when war came to their doorsteps, women participated in the conflict in complex and varied ways that reveal the critical distinctions and intersections of race, class and allegiance that defined the era. This panel will consist of…
Find out more »Livestream – Chinese Tea and American Rebels: The Global Origins of the Revolutionary Crisis
Watch live online as historian Nick Bunker delivers the annual George Rogers Clark Lecture. Drawing on his book, An Empire on the Edge, a 2015 finalist for the Pulitzer Prize for History, this lecture reexamines the Boston Tea Party and the onset of the revolution in Massachusetts in 1774, and places them in their global context. Making connections between events in China, India, London, and America, Bunker discusses how Britain’s commercial dynamism outstripped its political imagination and how a 1772…
Find out more »November 2022
Author’s Talk – Misinformation Nation: Foreign News and the Politics of Truth in Revolutionary America
"Fake news" is nothing new. Just like millions of Americans today, the revolutionaries of the eighteenth century worried that they were entering a "post-truth" era. Their fears, however, were not fixated on social media or clickbait, but rather on peoples' increasing reliance on reading news gathered from foreign newspapers. News was the lifeblood of early American politics, but newspaper printers had few reliable sources to report on events from abroad. Accounts of battles and beheadings, as well as declarations and…
Find out more »Lecture – The Other 1776: Reform and French Military Dress in the Late Ancien Regime
Following its catastrophic defeat in the Seven Years’ War, the French military undertook a comprehensive series of reforms affecting everything from warship design to soldiers' uniforms, which dramatically altered the army’s appearance. This uniform provided unheard-of amenities for French soldiers but was widely disliked and quickly replaced. The fallout surrounding the 1776 uniform reflects the most consequential moment of the eighteenth century for the material culture of the French military. Far from being an emblem of a staid or conservative…
Find out more »December 2022
Dinner and Lecture – The Battles of Kings Mountain and Cowpens: The American Revolution in the Southern Backcountry
Please note: This event was originally scheduled for September 30, but was postponed due to inclement weather. The southern backcountry was the center of the fight for independence, but backcountry devotion to the patriot cause was slow in coming. Decades of animosity between coastal elites and backcountry settlers who did not enjoy accurate representation in the assemblies meant a complex political and social milieu throughout the turbulent time. While examining the political, social and military history of the southern backcountry,…
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