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.
January 2020
Author’s Talk – The Insurgent Delegate: Selected Letters and Other Writings of George Thatcher
William C. diGiacomantonio, chief historian of the U.S. Capitol Historical Society, discusses and signs copies of his edited volume of selected letters of George Thatcher, a U.S. representative from Maine throughout the Federalist Era—the most critical and formative period of American constitutional history. The more than two hundred letters Thatcher wrote during his forty-year career as a country lawyer, national legislator and state supreme court justice document his experiences as a New England Federalist, abolitionist, religious dissenter and pedagogical innovator.…
Find out more »February 2020
Author’s Talk – The Soldier’s Two Bodies: Military Sacrifice and Popular Sovereignty in Revolutionary War Veteran Narratives
James M. Greene, assistant professor of English at Indiana State University, discusses and signs copies of his book exploring Revolutionary War veterans’ narratives and how soldiers have been represented in two contrasting ways from the nation’s first days: as heroic symbols of the body politic and as people whose sufferings have been neglected by their country. Greene discusses several well-known examples of the genre, including narratives from Ethan Allen, Joseph Plumb Martin and Deborah Sampson, along with Herman Melville’s fictional…
Find out more »Lecture—Abigail Adams and America’s “Founding Mothers”
Join the American Revolution Institute for a special lecture and reception in Charleston, South Carolina, at The Charleston Museum. The heroines of the American Revolution are underappreciated, yet their stories are inspiring and exciting. Woody Holton, one of the nation’s preeminent scholars on women’s leadership during the founding era, discusses the efforts of Abigail Adams and other unsung women of the Revolution. His book Abigail Adams is an award-winning and much-celebrated work. The evening begins with a reception at 5:45…
Find out more »Lunch Bite – A Map of the Province of New York, with Part of Pensilvania, and New England
Join Library Assistant Kieran O'Keefe for a discussion of a hand-colored map of New York published in 1775 and of mapmaking in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world. The map was based on a survey conducted by John Montresor, a British military engineer and cartographer. Montresor came to America at the beginning of the French and Indian War and served in the British army throughout the conflict. He continued in America during the first few years of the Revolution. The map primarily…
Find out more »Author’s Talk – Captives of Liberty: Prisoners of War and the Politics of Vengeance in the American Revolution
T. Cole Jones, assistant professor of history at Purdue University, discusses and signs copies of his book examining the ways the revolutionary generation dealt with the more than seventeen thousand enemy soldiers captured during the war. The number of enemy prisoners in American custody often exceeded that of American soldiers in the Continental Army. These prisoners proved increasingly burdensome for the new nation as the war progressed, and a series of thorny political issues compounded these logistical difficulties. From the meeting…
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