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.
September 2023
Special Program – The 2023 Society of the Cincinnati Prize Presentation & Reception
The 2023 Society of the Cincinnati Prize honors historian Friederike Baer, Ph.D., and her ground-breaking book Hessians: German Soldiers in the American Revolutionary War (Oxford University Press, 2022). Between 1776 and 1783, Great Britain hired an estimated thirty thousand German soldiers to fight in its war against the American rebels. Collectively known as Hessians, the soldiers and accompanying civilians, including hundreds of women and children, spent extended periods of time in locations as dispersed and varied as Canada, West Florida…
Find out more »Dinner and Lecture – The Prelude to Monmouth
This dinner and lecture at the Hyatt Regency Morristown kicks off the Institute’s next two-day battlefield tour experience exploring a significant turning point of the American Revolution: the Battle of Monmouth. The evening begins at 5 p.m. with cocktails will be available through a cash bar, followed by a buffet style dinner. Following dinner, a lecture featuring award-winning historian Ricardo A. Herrera, Ph.D., of the U.S. Army War College discussing the events that led to the Battle of Monmouth. The…
Find out more »Battlefield Tour – The Battle of Monmouth
Join us as we explore the the Battle of Monmouth. Using Morristown, N.J., as our base of operations, this experience will include a Friday evening dinner and lecture given by award-winning historian Ricardo A. Herrera, Ph.D., of the U.S. Army War College discussing the events that led to the battle. Accompanying the dinner and lecture, a guided bus tour of Monmouth Battlefield the following day will closely examine the events that transpired during the siege and explore various key locations…
Find out more »Lunch Bite – Statues of Nathan Hale
“I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country.” The words Nathan Hale is said to have uttered just before being hanged as a spy by the British are among the best remembered of the Revolution. The young schoolteacher-turned-officer-turned-spy was a hero to nineteenth-century Americans, but they didn’t know what he looked like, as no contemporary likeness survived. Then two American sculptors working at the turn of the twentieth century imagined Nathan Hale in bronze…
Find out more »October 2023
Author’s Talk – Revolutionary Things: Material Culture and Politics in the Late Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World
Ashli White, professor of history at the University of Miami, explores the circulation of material culture during the American, French, and Haitian revolutions and argues that radical ideals in the eighteenth century were contested through objects as well as in texts. In this lecture on her new book, Dr. White considers how revolutionary things brought people into contact with these transformative political movements in visceral, multiple, and provocative ways. Focusing on a range of objects—ceramics and furniture, garments and accessories,…
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